Review of A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018) by Anthony B — 27 Jan 2018

The most impressive thing about A Futile And Stupid Gesture is how much ground they were able to cover in a 100 minutes. I'm not sure if David Wain's direction was the best choice but it was high energy (for better or worse) and went down easy.

.. maybe a little too easy. As a biopic is falls a little flat but as a fanboy love letter to comedic genius Doug Kenney, it's sweet. Will Forte does a solid job portraying Kenney as a larger than life persona and even manages to overcome the overly cartoony/stylized production and provide depth.

Other standouts in the cast include Joel McHale as Chevy Chase, Domhnall Gleeson as Henry Beard, and Thomas Lennon as Michael O'Donoghue, apart from that, most of the players in this film are squandered because of the hyper-spastic pacing.

In particular, I was really pissed that they had the balls to cast Seth Green as Christopher Guest (a stroke of brilliance) only to not even give him a single line. Overall, Nation Lampoon was an insane mess of a venture spearheaded by an insane mess of a man, so it makes sense that a film about his life would be no different.

Also, I recommend watching the documentary Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon (also on Netflix) either before or after A Futile And Stupid Gesture as it provides insight, humanity, and context to a film that is very funny.