A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE

(David Wain, USA, 2018)

Taking its title from a paraphrased line in John Landis’ ANIMAL HOUSE, the 1978 paradigm of frathouse films, A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE is, at its core, a comic biopic of Doug Kenney, a comedy writer who co-founded the magazine National Lampoon in 1970 and died only ten years later in an accidental fall/possible suicide off a cliff in Hawaii. In between, he helped create a media empire that expanded from an underground magazine to books, radio, television, and cinema, including the aforementioned Landis classic and the VACATION series, and discovered or promoted some of the biggest names in American comedy of the 20th century, including John Belushi, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner. But Kenney was, above all, an anarchic and irreverent comedian, willing to do anything and everything to get a laugh, including mocking subjects previously thought off-limits and wading into the treacherous waters of dark humour; a conventional biopic of him is not exactly in the cards.