Fútil e Inútil

POILER: I really enjoyed this film. I have watched several of the documentaries concerning Animal House and Caddyshack and Doug Kenney's name comes up quite often amongst the cast and crew. Chevy Chase and he were really close and Chevy still feels some guilt over leaving Hawaii right before Kenney's death. The man was apparently a comic genius who couldn't escape his childhood baggage.

The format is well played with Will Forte as the young Doug and Martin Mull as kind of older, alternate universe Doug, if Kenney had lived, narrating the film. The rest of the cast is well known, playing unknown actors and writers. It took me a second to recognize Natasha Lyonne (American Pie) as Anne Beatts, Thomas Lennon (Reno 911) as Micheal O'Donoghue, and Joel McHale (Community) as Chevy Chase. All of them are covered in 70s hairstyles and McHale does a really good job of mimicking Chase's speech patterns and even his trademark pratfalls.

The film excels in showing how Kenney rose from a malcontent to a Harvard grad to a fledgling magazine editor to movie writer. Forte is especially compelling and funny as Kenney. He doesn't quite have the acting range to pull off the downward spiral of the person, but he does an excellent job with the jokes and the other aspects of Kenney's life. Where the film fails is trying to shoehorn too many characters into its 100 minute run time. There is even a humorous scene of older Kenney (Mull) explaining to a bunch of supporting characters that there wasn't enough screen time for all of them so they get ignored. But the film goes to great pains to cram in other famous people such as Gilda Radner, Christopher Guess (Seth Green), Bill Murray, and John Belushi. The actors playing Murray and Belushi came off as actors lampooning (no pun intended) the famous comedians. Belushi was such a huge personality, I doubt anyone could portray him properly in such a short cameo.

Another special mention goes out to Emmy Rossum. She is a stunning screen presence and even though her appearance is short, as Kenney's last girlfriend, she lights up the screen. She is a gorgeous actress as well.

There is also a fun nod to Animal House with Mark Metcalf (Neidermeyer) portraying a publisher.

The movie moves fast through the various periods of Kenney's life, but I think he would have enjoyed it. He comes off as funny, yet troubled, a brilliant comedian, but an emotionally stinted adult. A Futile and Stupid Gesture is anything but. The only thing I would have added, is maybe some post interviews with the actual people portrayed in the movie who knew Kenney, even if they were archival for some (Belushi and Ramis). Still, this was a well-done film.

David Wain tells a true story in a creative way, creating the kind of the film his subject would have written, although a little sadder. Every actor does a superb job, Will Forte hits the perfect melancholic note. Dom Gleeson as usual is excellent. This is a wonderful tribute to Doug.

This is a good movie. It's a story well told but it's certainly one sided. For one thing it ignores the fact that National Lampoon wasn't very funny. It is also a bit of a hatchet job on the parents and P J O'Rourke, whose least credit, as probably the funniest American print writer of the 20th century, is editor of NL.

Worth watching though.

A driven joker pushes his way through Harvard and on to comedy stardom, but the fun begins to get manic ...

Clever story telling that takes a while to get the right mood, but once it hits the American Hustle-style montage pace with the '70s period look it just rolls along. Plenty of decent laughs, but with good introspection by the lead actor. I didn't know much about this guy, and his stuff was just before my time, but I found the story really engaging, and of course there's the satisfaction of spotting a host of comedy stars at the start of their screen careers. Biggest laugh was Chevy Chase trying to pour a drink at the parents' new mansion.

The meta narrative is amusing, with a pointed reference to the source of the movie's title, but it also pulls a clever trick in setting up a shock ending for anyone who doesn't know this man's life. Only complaint is that there's no killer line. Maybe: "All you had to say was don't call me Shirley".

The performances are good all round, and the direction, editing and cheerful music keep it bubbling all the way through.

Overall: Nice surprise, big recommend.

Just after watching the documentary "Drunk Stoned Stupid Dead" I discovered that there was also a TV movie covering the same period, focused on co-founder Doug Kenney. So I had to watch that, even though the reviewers were middling.

I don't understand those middling reviews, because I thought this was tremendously entertaining. It's basically a movie about very witty people saying funny things, held together by the protagonist's downward spiral. It is less reverential than the documentary, which tiptoed around the whole priveleged-white-male thing, and it does it's best to mock itself, as when a scroll points out all the discrepancies between the movie and the real story.

The movie does at times rely too heavily on its narrative devices, sometimes falling into a gimmicky cutesiness, and the ending feels like a flailing attempt to pull things together, but overall this is funny and very well acted. My advice: ignore the critics, watch the movie.