A Futile And Stupid Gesture is a film about one of the funniest men in contemporary comedy – Douglas Kenney, the godfather of the National Lampoon brand, and the brains behind Caddyshack, Animal House, and a swathe of the most shocking satirical editorial of the seventies and eighties. And yet those expecting the feature film, which debuted at Sundance late last month and was rushed onto Netflix within a matter of days, to be even half as amusing as the works of its subject should steel themselves for disappointment now.
See, with its shrill and shockingly self-indulgent winks to camera, A Futile And Stupid Gesture is about as amusing as terminal cancer, a post-modernist piss stain that ends up insulting its hero just as it tries to honour him.
Screenwriters John Aboud and Michael Colton deserve some credit for at least trying to take a fresh look at the biopic format – attempting to emulate the anarchist impulses of Kenney themselves, they fill the film with lectures delivered to camera, constant in-jokes designed to cover up the exclusion of women and people of colour, and the incorporation of a range of different film formats, chiefly a brief excursion into comic panels.
But not a single one of their gambles pays off, and the sneering attempts at cleverness go entirely against Kenney’s own aversion to anything resembling the highbrow or the pretentious. This is a man who borrowed the perversity of R. Crumb, slathered it in pot brownie batter, stuck a coupla fire crackers up its arse and watched the whole thing blow up in a shower of sex, excess and sadism – why the fuck try to tell his story with jokes more suited for a particularly sub-par straight to video rip-off of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off?
The film follows Kenney, played determinedly but without much nuance by Will Forte, from his early years as an underappreciated, moody young man, through his awkward blossoming into the unwilling head of a comedy empire, right up to his tragic and unexpected death – and then even further, via a stunningly misguided narrative device that’s not half as clever as Aboud and Colton think it is.
Some critics have described what happens in the film’s third act as a twist, so I won’t spoil it. But between you and me, it’s not a twist. It’s a fucking tragedy, rather akin to watching an Olympic pole-vaulter break both shins upon landing. No finale has been so badly bungled since the “surprise, it’s 9/11!” twist that caps off Robert Pattinson’s teen weepy turned bizarre exploitation flick Remember Me – which is saying something.
And yet all of this would be forgiven if A Futile And Stupid Gesture contained a single laugh – just one. An unfunny comedy might have been excusable. But an unfunny comedy about one of our most acclaimed and distinct contemporary comedic voices? That’s just a fucken’ disgrace.
A Futile And Stupid Gesture is available to Stream on Netflix now. To read about something available to stream on Netflix that’s far more interesting than A Futile And Stupid Gesture, head here.
