A Futile and Stupid Gesture

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Nobly, Wain is trying something new here; unfortunately it jumps awkwardly between a stylistic & dramatic punk rock film, & a traditional biopic, leaning on cliched storytelling tropes that he would normally lampoon. Even the funniest stuff is all old National Lampoon creations, not film originals. The stunt casting is fun (especially Daly's Murray), but the bad makeup & wigs, filmmaking insecurity & Forte's unnuanced lead performance just point to Wain not quite having a control over the material.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture: Directed by David Wain and written by Michael Coulton and John Aboud This is a biopic about Doug Kenney who helped create National Lampoon magazine when that still meant something and then wrote Animal House and Caddyshack before falling to his death from a cliff in Hawaii. This had some fourth wall breaking funny moments and it was irreverent towards the things important to the time. This was a biopic film to a tee. It was parodied in Walk Hard right down the wrong son died thing. It reminded me a lot of Walk the Line. A strong artistic personality who has a difficult time handling his relationships with women and handling drugs. He thinks he needs it to create. You've seen this before. It was easy to understand why Doug Kenney was important to comedy at the time. It was not easy to understand his relationships to others. Most of them come in and leave arbitrarily. They leave no impact on anything. It is right down the middle. Everything looks like fun but you don't really grasp why this was important. This was a middle of the road movie. If you've seen one biopic, you've seen this movie. You can easily skip it. I give this movie a C.

This is a typical rushed and superficially told story about a privileged boomer who happens to make it big in the entertainment industry and is destroyed by it. The film is only interesting when it goes into ensemble mode and recreates the Lampoon staff, Animal House and Caddyshack. (A cheap trick.) But instead of focusing on the creative collective, someone decided to make this tragic Kenney feller the star of the movie. But who IS Doug Kenney? (to paraphrase a much better biopic about another '70s figure). We never get to know. All we get is Will Forte playing yet another of his manchildren. He is difficult to sympathise with and hurting everybody in his self-absorbed, destructive ways. And in a terrible wig. They all have terrible wigs. The Lampoon humor comes across as terribly mundane today. It has not aged as well as, say Monty Python, because its just not very clever, only shocking. I'd rather the movie explored why this kind of humor got so popular back then. I'd rather recommend American Splendor or Fear and Loathing for a dive into '70s American counter-culture. This film is just a parody.

'A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE': Three and a Half Stars (Out of Five) A comedy biopic about writer Doug Kenney, who was the main contributor to the success of National Lampoon in the 1970s and 80s. The film stars Will Forte as Kenney, and it was directed by David Wain (who also helmed 'WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER', and several episodes of the TV series based on it). It costars Domhnall Gleeson, Martin Mull, Emmy Rossum, Matt Walsh, Joel McHale, and many others (in cameos as famous comedians). The movie was scripted by John Aboud and Michael Colton, and it's based on the book (of the same name) by Josh Karp. The film was released by Netflix through it's streaming site, and it's gotten mixed to positive reviews from critics. I found it to be both educational and funny, but it's also a little too dark and unbalanced. The film is narrated by Doug Kenney, supposedly in modern day (Mull). He tells his life story, starting when he was in his twenties (Forte); when he and his best friend Henry Beard (Gleeson) decided to create the magazine National Lampoon. It of course became a huge success, and blockbuster movies followed (like 'ANIMAL HOUSE' and 'CADDYSHACK'). Kenney could never be content, or happy, still though. I knew nothing about Doug Kenney previous to seeing this movie, but I love his work. So I was absolutely fascinated by this film, and I of course found it to be very educational. I also loved seeing all of these other actors portraying other famous actors (like Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and John Belushi). I also just really enjoyed seeing how these classic comedy films, and that famous comedy magazine, came to life. Forte is great in the lead too, and the supporting cast is all more than adequate. The film, as funny and interesting as it often is, is still really dark and depressing though. It left me with mixed feelings about how I really felt about it as a whole. It's also got a strong TV feel to it, which kind of cheapens what should have been a theatrical film feel (the story deserved a theatrical presentation at least).