Will Forte has been a driving force in odd, offbeat humor for years. Getting his start on Saturday Night Live, like many talented artists have, led him to a great career in comedy. So to see him play Douglas Kenney, the creator of National Lampoon and outright enemy of SNL, was very interesting. A Futile and Stupid Gesture is an often entertaining but tonally confusing biography film that succeeds in the telling of the information but fails to create a bond between the characters' lives and the audience.
The best aspect of this film was, unfortunately, the aspect that it focused the least on: the actual telling of Doug's story. This movie was a cross between a documentary and biopic, but those two genres could not blend well together at all. The film begins with an older version of Kenney that the audience is assumed to believe is the actual man. Throughout the movie, he reappears in certain scenes to narrate what is going on in his younger life. I thought this technique was incredibly original and engaging, but there was not a lot of it. It seemed like he only showed up during the most pivotal moments of Doug's life, but I feel this narrative technique could have been explored much deeper. However, the twist at the end of the film when it is realized that Kenney committed suicide made for a really good moment. As for the biographical information, it was extremely interesting learning about Kenney's life and his inner demons but this movie relied too heavily on side characters and their humor to make an emotional impact on me.
Will Forte fit this role of the famous creator of National Lampoon very well, regardless of his age. I still would have preferred to have seen a different actor for Doug when he was in his younger, college years, though, despite the meta-narrative joke about Forte looking like he was 27. It just did not seem continuously appropriate to have Forte in these scenes. Especially when Kenney's lifelong best friend Henry Beard was played by Domhnall Gleeson, who is only 35. In fact, Gleeson's Henry Beard may have been the best performance of this whole film. He brought a lot of dry humor in the movie while creating a very compelling relationship between his character and Forte's. The entire cast was chock full of comedic powerhouses, but they didn't all completely work for me. Even though that was one of the jokes was that none of the actors look "exactly like the real people." Even though the cast was a bit strange, the ending food fight scene of the film had a whole lot of heart and I appreciated the full-circle references.
David Wain, the director, was definitely off his game in this movie. Because of my problem with the telling of the narrative, the whole movie ended up being structured and paced very strangely. And despite the fact that the way they presented the narration was clever, there is just something about it that does not sit well with me. I simply did not appreciate that they made up an older character of this famous writer who has been dead for more than 30 years, as it seems a tad insensitive. But perhaps that dark irony is exactly what Doug Kenney would have wanted. I also did not enjoy the treatment of women, minorities, or anyone who was not a straight, white male in this film. I completely understand the events that were told were true, but in the form of this movie, the characters learned nothing from their mistakes. There were no repercussions for their actions, and I am certain that in reality, Kenney was a deeply disturbed man who carried the burdens of his awful treatment of women and others around him. I would have enjoyed seeing more of an exploration into his psyche rather than relying on intolerant, racist, and misogynistic jokes to carry the humorous story of his career.
A Futile and Stupid Gesture is a decent watch to learn more about the career ups and downs of Douglas Kenney, but in the narrative sense, fails to provide any clear form. While some of the characters' choices and the design throughout were a bit campy, I still relatively enjoyed this film for what it attempted to be.
My Rating: ★★½
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