A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)

Sick Product of a Sick System

Powerful

A lot of fun.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Not sure why the movie pretends Doug Kenney is alive (Martin Mull plays him at the beginning) and why some people are saying Alex Garcia-Mata is a fictional character. Not really a spoiler but if Doug died in 1980 why does the movie pretend he's alive at the beginning? And as far as Alex is concerned, I'm no expert but a quick Google search shows she did exist and there's a NY Times article announcing their engagement in 1970 (http://www.nytimes.com/1970/01/17/archives/miss-garciamata-is-engaged-to-douglas-kenney-an-editor.html). Anyway....It is entertaining, which is what movies should be and I enjoyed watching it. I'll leave the rest to others to hash out!

A Futile and Stupid Gesture: Directed by David Wain and written by Michael Coulton and John AboudThis 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.

The film moves along with a sense of invention and wit, like the supermarket economy version of an Edgar Wright movie, and feels like it might shift up a gear at any moment. But that 'intro' style vibe just kind of continues... right through until Kenney starts to unravel, where it just loses steam and doesn't have much of interest to say. Whereas say, in Fincher's The Social Network the film revolves and relies upon a compelling theme of loyalty's breaking point, or the value of ideas, AFASG's theme seems to never transcend 'hey, some people unravel the more successful they get!' I don't know what it is with these Netflix films, they all seem to be very eager to be impressive and likeable, but without really having a heart and soul. Its like a new genre aimed at people distracted on their phones or something.

In the 1970s and '80s, National Lampoon's success and influence creates a new media empire overseen in part by the brilliant and troubled Doug Kenney. Fans of National Lampoon won't be disappointed from this film but for someone who never found this movies masterpieces this movie was off and gross plus boring as hell. The main leads were retards and the comedic elements weren't even that funny, A Futile and Stupid Gesture is the perfect example of a January film i'm afraid. (0/10)