A Futile and Stupid Gesture
2018
•
1h 41min
• Comedy
A FUTILE AND STUPID GESTURE tells the story of comic innovator Doug Kenney (Will Forte), who committed suicide in 1980 at the age of 33. Kenney left Harvard to start the subversive, sexually explicit humor magazine National Lampoon, and the same countercultural, anti-establishment point of view showcased there would also fuel a successful radio show, a play, and the movie Animal House, which earned more than $100 million, and launch a generation of comic writers and performers who would, among other things, write and star in television's Saturday Night Live. With Harvard classmate Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson), Kenney innovated American humor, launching mainstream acceptance of a bawdier and more subversive kind of comedy. After graduation, he and Beard continued their mockery of hypocrisy and sentimentality in American morals, entertainment, government, and everyday life. Kenney's obsession with work, success, and taking proprietary credit for all comic innovations that came after him were fueled by alcohol and cocaine, the use of which is amply represented here. Addiction, selfishness, and personal isolation probably factored into his early demise. Given that he left his glasses and shoes at the top of a cliff in Hawaii (at the bottom of which his body was found), the movie suggests he jumped to his death.
