Will Forte

NEW YORK — When "Saturday Night Live" characters journey from sketch to screen, they often appear lost away from their live studio habitat.

The first "SNL" movie, 1980's "The Blues Brothers," was also the best, as anyone who recalls the "two honkies dressed like Hasidic diamond merchants" can attest.

Since then, there's been "Wayne's World," but most of the adaptations have resulted in films like "Coneheads" (1993) and "It's Pat" (1994). Others like Molly Shannon's "Superstar" (1999) and Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell's "A Night at the Roxbury" (1998) have their cult defenders, but the big-screen "SNL" output has been checkered at best.

Sometimes, a character hasn't seemed quite deserving of movie-length attention (see Stuart Smalley, played by Al Franken, in 1995's "Stuart Saves His Family"). Other times, the adaptations have struggled to go beyond the original one-joke premise (see Tim Meadows' 2000 film "The Ladies' Man").

Enter "MacGruber."

Little about Will Forte's parody of the '80s adventure series "MacGyver" would seem befitting big-screen adaptation. Since the sketches began airing in January 2007, they've been remarkably similar: MacGruber gets distracted while assembling household items to try to deactivate a ticking time bomb. He and his assistants explode in a perfectly timed finale.

Forte, himself, never thought the sketches had any cinematic viability. Yet when he was approached about making "MacGruber" into a film, he couldn't turn it down.

The resulting movie, which opens Friday, is very much an "SNL" creation: It's produced by Lorne Michaels, directed by "SNL" writer Jorma Taccone, and written by Forte, Taccone and John Solomon, another writer on the show.

"Some people have already developed opinions one way or another about 'SNL' movies," Forte said. "I hope they give it a chance."

One thing going for it: "MacGruber," the film, doesn't feel like a 90-minute sketch. Forte and company expanded the story into an '80s action film parody. MacGruber never leaves his red Miata without his car stereo, on which he blasts Toto and Mr. Mister.

"People seem to want to throw this into this 'SNL' bag, which is great if they're talking about 'Blues Brothers' or 'Wayne's World,' but might not be great if they're talking about other movies," says Forte. "We never were looking at this as an 'SNL' movie, we were just looking at this as a movie."