Une drôle de fin

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.

Rarely do movies make me laugh out loud anymore. This movie not only made me do it repeatedly, but had me laughing hours later remembering some of the bits. Extremely clever, well told story of a brilliantly hilarious guy who I, and I would guess most of my generation (I'm 31), am not familiar with. This was truly a 10/10 and I hope Netflix makes more like it down the road.

After looking up Douglas Kenney (quote: Though almost completely unknown, this man was one of the originators of a highly popular and groundbreaking new form of comedy and satire) and reading his full biography I admit I never heard of him before, even though I watched Animal House and Caddyshack, like everybody else probably. It's an interesting story to watch, a bit sad but told in a funny way, probably just like he would have wanted it. It's just too bad there wasn't a small part for the real comedians from those movies, that would have been a nice addition. But watching Will Forte is always funny. Since the series The Last Man On Earth I'm a big fan of him. The cast was just very good for this movie, mostly comedians better known from comedy series, but none of them has to prove anything anymore as they are all funny. The movie is well shot, never a dull moment, and it's a story that is worth to be told. National Lampoon is a name everybody knows or has heard of, and this movie is a nice hommage to one of the co-founders, maybe a bit excentric, certainly not a fully happy man, but with a fascinating life.

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.

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.