A Futile and Stupid Gesture

A Futile and Stupid Gesture

I've been waiting for this to come out for a few years (since I first saw it announced on IMDb), and I'll start by saying that this is not a very good movie. It's tonally messy, Will Forte is wildly miscast, it's watered down in every way except for the drugs, and if you're interested in comedy and want to see a movie that tells Doug Kenney's story in a clear, honest, and exhilarating way, it's much better to watch the documentary Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, which is on Netflix. All that being said, let me explain why I still had a lovely time watching this movie.

Spoilers!

For starters, this is a film that's made almost exclusively for National Lampoon fans and comedy nerds. Lack of knowledge about the magazine, the movies, the comedians, and the comedians playing the comedians will result in confusion and an overall lack of investment in what's happening. For example, Joel McHale is a perfectly acceptable choice to play Chevy Chase, but knowing that both he and Chase starred on Community together, and that McHale has very mixed feelings about Chase in real life, is the key to what makes that casting interesting. Seeing modern improv heroes like Neil Casey, John Gemberling, Jon Daly, Paul Scheer, Brian Huskey, and Matt Walsh is delightful, and luckily they're all acceptably cast as well (with Scheer and Huskey only making tiny cameos). David Wain directs the film, so other The State alumni Tom Lennon and Joe Lo Truglio have roles, as well as Martin Mull, Matt Lucas, Ed Helms, David Krumholtz, Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, and Seth Green (who, criminally, is in about eight seconds of the movie, playing Christopher Guest incredibly well) to round out the rest of the powerful comedy cast. The movie is sloppy in its storytelling and doesn't explain itself for anyone who isn't familiar with its subject matter, but watching these niche, modern comedians play in the time capsule of this legendary 70's era of comedy is what makes the movie wildly entertaining. They're not even necessarily giving very good performances in terms of acting, but seeing them try and nail down Lampoon's very specific style of humor is just fascinating. 

Domnhall Gleeson, Emmy Rossum, and Natasha Lyonne are the only dramatic actors in the film, and they all give fantastic performances. However, this only highlights how the rest of the cast isn't quite dramatically up to par, and especially how unfortunately miscast Will Forte is, which is hard to admit as a fan of his. He's not meant to play a wild, coke-addled, sex-crazed, eccentric genius with mood swings-type because he simply comes off as too sweet and harmless. Maybe that was their way of lightening up the character and making him more sympathetic, but instead he just doesn't fit with the rest of the movie and comes off like a dorky dad. There were times where it almost felt like a bit, like if Forte was playing a rock star like Mick Jagger in a funny fake-biopic-movie-trailer sketch. He's that out of place. It's in no way his fault, and I love seeing him as main character again (the first time since 2013's Nebraska), this just wasn't the right part for him.

The way the film tells its story is all over the place. Martin Mull plays a fictional present day version of Kenney, and tells a lot of meta jokes while breaking the fourth wall (at one point literally calling himself "a narrative device"), like 24 Hour Party People, American Splendor, Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, I, Tonya, and any other meta biopics of this nature I might be forgetting. Sometimes this is funny and can work, like when he points out how they did a pretty okay job with casting but maybe didn't quite hit the mark, and how Forte is obviously not 27 years old, but other times he feels out of place and is overall inconsistently used. The movie also feels very rushed in terms of getting through each specific story beat of Kenney's life (what The AV Club refers to as "Wikipedidis"). However, where this film excels is in its editing. Because the overall look of the film (in terms of color, lighting, and cinematography) feels oddly cartoony, it's when they embrace the cartooniness of it and do odd editing and sequences that it turns into something really interesting. Examples include: when Kenney cheats on his wife and she walks in on them, it's done in the still photo, comic panel style of one of the magazine's most famous bits; in another emotional point for Kenney, the National Lampoon players (Chase, Murray, Radner, Guest, Belushi, and Ramis) show up behind him and do a radio bit that narrates his sadness; Kenney and his girlfriend leave a party and take their fancy clothes off to reveal vacation clothes underneath, then walk onto a Hollywood movie set in the same shot. These are the most memorable and unique scenes in the movie because they're risky and could only work for this movie. It's when they try to be dramatic in a more conventional biopic way that it falls flat. If Wain had just fully embraced the weirdness and gotten really crazy with the filmmaking, this could have been a far more interesting movie.

I didn't really expand on how it's watered down, but I think that's because I would feel somewhat sleazy giving the note that it should have more sex and debauchery. Adding more sex could also feel a bit exploitative and probably end up being too similar to Wolf of Wall Street, so I can understand why they didn't go far into that direction. That being said, they didn't really go in that direction at all. The characters practically come off as celibate. Sure, there's several scenes of characters doing cocaine, but even that's shown in an oddly light way. These people were legendary party monsters, sex and drugs were essentially food and water to them, and their art reflected that. The entire appeal of Animal House is that it feels like a real party, and Caddyshack was essentially made on accident while they were having a multiple-month-long party. They also partook in a lot of sexist and racist humor, which the movie somewhat avoids, and it calls itself out for dodging that subject in a few funny different ways. This is an element that's more than okay to skim over as it wasn't anywhere near as important as the partying, and it would not exactly be helpful in the current social climate. But even if you drop that element, this is still a movie about National Lampoon, so there should be a lot more depraved insanity in order to honor that premise.

However, regardless of the overall quality of the film, if you're a comedy nerd you should still absolutely check it out, especially if you love both niche modern comedy and wild 70's era comedy. Otherwise, I would again recommend watching that documentary first, so that if you decide to then watch A Futile and Stupid Gesture you'll actually know what's going on. It's by no means a great movie, or even a good one, but if you're passionate about the source material and/or the cast, you'll still get something out of it.