| While vacationing in Hawaii in 1980, the National Lampoon magazine co … John Aboud, “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” makes you want to see a movie about all that, just not one so innocuously unconvincing. Kenney was at the center of the 70’s comedy counter-culture which gave birth to Saturday Night Live and a whole generation’s way of looking at the world. What the fuck am I gonna do now? The real dog used in the photo was named Cheeseface.

Theoretically, the idea of his older self telling his own story might have worked, if we didn’t feel like it was just another half-baked thing the movie was throwing against the wall. Couldn’t Forte have spent a few weeks growing out his sideburns so that the make-up person didn’t have to glue two pieces of shag carpeting onto his face? “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” was adapted from Josh Karp’s 2006 book of the same name, but I suspect that the film was even more inspired by Douglas Tirola’s brilliant documentary “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of The National Lampoon,” which premiered at Sundance in 2015. https://laughingsquid.com/national-lampoon-a-futile-and-stupid-gesture But when you watch “A Futile and Stupid Gesture,” a Netflix release (it’s available starting Friday, Jan. 26) that premiered yesterday at Sundance, you’re confronted, head-on, with the quintessence of the Netflix-original-film aesthetic, and it is not a pretty sight. As much as David Wain’s “A Futile And Stupid Gesture” (premiering on Netflix January 26) might feel like a retread of its buoyant history lesson, his adaptation of Josh Karp’s book of the same name focuses primarily on the exploits of Lampoon co-founder Douglas Kenney, filtering the publication’s incendiary accomplishments through his suitably troubled personal history while assembling an impressive cast of contemporary comedy stars to provide some occasionally wildly uneven but always fun-to-behold impersonations of their iconic predecessors. Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon is a 2015 American documentary film directed by Douglas Tirola. But Wain made a terrible mistake when he decided to turn Kenney’s story into a goof, a sketch, a riff of threadbare mockery, instead of treating it as a relatively straight movie with laughs. The Office (2006-2010) - Director of four episodes. If there’s a perfect midpoint between Will Forte’s exhilarating, gonzo turn as MacGruber and the drily sweet role he played in “Nebraska,” Doug Kenney might be it, astutely juggling the responsibility of being extremely funny while showcasing how, and why, his real-life counterpart never quite captured as much of the spotlight as his colleagues. A Futile and Stupid Gesture is the story of comedy wunderkind Doug Kenney, who co-created the National Lampoon, Caddyshack, and Animal House. In the 1970s and '80s, National Lampoon's success and influence creates a new media empire overseen in part by the brilliant and troubled Douglas Kenney.

View production, box office, & company info, Michael Colton, Doug Kenney was an extremely hostile writer; that’s why he, along with his National Lampoon co-founder Henry Beard, created a magazine that operated in a kind of blasphemous attack mode. (Martin Mull also appears in the film as an older version of Kenney, who narrates the film and frequently dismantles its necessary diversions into the more conventional conflicts he has with his parents, friends and lovers.

Doug Kenney was an extremely hostile writer; that’s why he, along with his National Lampoon co-founder Henry Beard, created a magazine that operated in a kind of blasphemous attack mode. After the end credits have rolled, Martin Mull is shown singing the song "Time of My Life" with members of the cast. Wain grew up in middle-class Ohio, just like Kenney, and the notion of a Doug Kenney biopic sounded like a perfect fit for him. (I don’t mean a budget for sideburn-growing; I mean a budget that would allow the filmmakers the luxury of time to shoot in continuity.) In the 1970s and '80s, National Lampoon's success and influence creates a new media empire overseen in part by the brilliant and troubled Douglas Kenney.

Retaining the photo of the man holding a gun to a dog's head, the words "Buy This Magazine" in the original caption "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog" has been changed to "See This Documentary". 'National Lampoon' Blasts A+E Studios Over Series Based on Magazine's History, Lionsgate Nabs Worldwide Rights to 'Blindspotting', Darren Aronofsky's VR Series 'Spheres' Lands Record Sundance Deal, Sundance 2018 Augmented Reality Art: Inside the NSX Gallery at the Acura Lounge, 97 Sundance Portraits From TheWrap at Acura Studios With Keira Knightley, Robert Pattinson and More (Photos), Photographed by Irvin Rivera for TheWrap at the Acura Studios, Sundance: Every Movie Sold So Far – And It Ain’t Much. That's the movie that everyone's gonna love, not fucking Caddyshack. ... Doug Kenney … At one point the film’s narrator, Martin Mull, in what’s supposed to be a cheeky meta way, acknowledges that the actors playing Belushi, etc., don’t look at all like their real-life counterparts.


Whether or not it’s perhaps slightly superfluous after “Drunk Stoned,” “A Futile And Stupid Gesture” is, ultimately, anything but pointless, exploring an important moment in pop culture through the life of a man who captured its essence as well as the people who made him an institution while using his work to tear down so many others.
A daily dose of art, culture and technology. Forte, in that wig, looks enough like the real Doug Kenney, who was strikingly handsome for a magazine guy, and he captures the compulsive joking that was Kenney’s neurotic way of detaching himself from any situation. But little of this comes across. How the Weeknd, Swift, Gaga, Styles, Dylan and BTS Might Fare, ‘After We Collided’ Review: You Know, Maybe ‘Twilight’ Wasn’t So Bad After All, Chadwick Boseman Could Be Among a Record Seven Posthumous Oscar Nominees, ‘Borat’ Sequel Trailer: Sacha Baron Cohen Takes on Coronavirus and Pence, ‘Ms.

Without question, “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” A project spearheaded by Doug Kenney.). [7], Paula Bernstein of Indiewire interviewed the director, Douglas Tirola, who commented, "What I liked about the Lampoon was there was no 'going too far'. TV-MA

Powered by Laughing Squid Hosting and WordPress VIPNewsletter | Affiliate Disclosure | Privacy Policy© 1995-2020 Laughing Squid LLC, all rights reserved, Daring Arborist Takes a Terrifying Ride on a Crooked Palm Tree After Chopping Off Its Top Heavy Fronds, Raccoon Cleverly Knocks on a Glass Door With Rock Between Her Paws When the Cat Food Bowl Is Empty, A Pair of Gorgeous Lynx Angrily Confront Each Another in the Road on a Beautiful Fall Day in Palmer, Alaska, Musician Puts Piano Strings on His Guitar and Guitar Strings on His Piano. The first film he directed (alongside his co-creator, Michael Showalter) was “Wet Hot American Summer” (2001), the ’80s-summer-camp-schlock sendup that’s now rightfully regarded as a delectable classic of pinpoint absurdist satire. If he had done that, it might have been hilarious, though in an acidly downbeat and far-reaching way. The film is about National Lampoon magazine, and how the magazine and its empire of spin-offs changed the course of comedy and humor. The cover is also referenced in the above-mentioned poster by an illustration of the dog. After working on the Harvard Lampoon as an undergraduate, Douglas C. Kenney co-founded the National Lampoon magazine and the National Lampoon Radio Hour. 101 min I should add that the 74-year-old Mull portrays the elderly Doug Kenney — a bizarre conceit, given that Kenney died, in 1980, at the age of 33, after falling off a cliff in Hawaii, in what was most likely a suicide. Surely you're not upset because someone else made a funny movie. Alternate advertising artwork features a reproduction of the famous but controversial cover of the January 1973 "Death" issue of the National Lampoon.