A Futile and Stupid Gesture ** ½ / *****
Directed by: David Wain.
Written by: Michael Colton & John Aboud based on the book by Josh Karp.
Starring: Will Forte (Doug Kenney), Martin Mull (Modern Doug, the Narrator), Domhnall Gleeson (Henry Beard), Thomas Lennon (Michael O'Donoghue), Joel McHale (Chevy Chase), John Gemberling (John Belushi), Matt Walsh (Matty Simmons), Rick Glassman (Harold Ramis), Jon Daly (Bill Murray), Seth Green (Christopher Guest), Matt Lucas (Tony Hendra), Paul Scheer (Paul Shaffer), Lonny Ross (Ivan Reitman), Neil Casey (Brian McConnachie), Armen Weitzman (Lorne Michaels), Jackie Tohn (Gilda Radner), Natasha Lyonne (Anne Beatts), Emmy Rossum (Kathryn Walker), Camille Guaty (Alex Garcia-Mata), Joe Lo Truglio (Brad), Erv Dahl (Rodney Dangerfield), Annette O'Toole (Doug’s mother), Elvy Yost (Mary Marshmallow).
If you’re going to make a film about National Lampoon in general, and one its founders Doug Kenney specifically, than director David Wain would seem like a good choice. While I’m not as big of a Wain film as many (sorry, I though Wet Hot American Summer was pretty bad, and other than Role Models, I haven’t much liked his other movies either) – but his films have the irreverent spirit that I think you may well need to make film about this group of people work. Yet, it ends up not working at all – because the screenplay takes such a conventional approach to Kenney’s life, rushing through his time in college right up until his death in his mid-30s – in about 100 minutes, essentially doing what all, conventional, boring biopics do and play like an assembly of greatest hits. Worse, the film takes some dark twists and turns, and Wain seems incapable of going there – the tone remains light and superficial throughout, even during bouts of depression, drug use and (maybe) a suicide. For a subject that is clearly a passion for all involved, you would think they would treat unconventional subjects in an unconventional way – not here.
The film follows Doug (Will Forte) from his time at Harvard, where he and best friend Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleason) do the Harvard Lampoon, and take to great heights, to the pair of them founding the National Lampoon magazine in the early 1970s, through its various incarnations and journeys, through Animal House and Caddyshack, drug abuse, marriages and friendships collapsing, etc. It’s less than a 20 year stretch, but it moves so quickly that we never get much of a handle on anything. In a weird, narrative device, the film casts Martin Mull as an older version of Doug Kenney to narrate the film, and comment on the action (it’s even stranger if you don’t know Kenney’s fate before watching the movie, as it comes out nowhere).
To be fair, I don’t think the movie is ever boring. Forte is good as Kenney, and Gleeson is even better as Beard – he has a dry wit about him that works here. The film casts a lot of well-known stars of today as well-known comedy stars involved in National Lampoon – and while none of them really look like the people they’re playing (with the exception of Lonny Ross as Ivan Reitman) or even sound much like them, the movie makes an amusing joke about this and moves on. The best of these performances is probably Joel McHale playing his Community co-star Chevy Chase. They didn’t much like each other on that TV show apparently, but McHale isn’t doing a hit job here (the film, I don’t think, is particularly nice to Chase either). No, he doesn’t try to look or sound like Chase, but he nails his physical movements in an amusing way.
What the movie really lacks is focus. The film introduces us to multiple characters, and then basically drops them without allowing them to do anything. We meet Kenney’s first wife – who is introduced as if she’s going to be his great love, and a major part of the story, and then she’s basically just gone. A second woman, who enters his life later (Emmy Rossum) isn’t given much to do either. Wain is never able to figure out how the handle the darker turns in the movie either. While there has always been a debate about whether Kenney’s death was an accident or a suicide, I think the movie makes its opinion clear it was a suicide – and yet, it pretty much comes out nowhere.
In short, I think there is enough about A Futile and Stupid Gesture that I liked that I wish it was better at just about everything it does. A film like this should work a lot better than it does – instead, this film is amusing in fits and starts, but doesn’t really go anywhere.
