It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Nobly, Wain is trying something new here; unfortunately it jumps awkwardly between a stylistic & dramatic punk rock film, & a traditional biopic, leaning on cliched storytelling tropes that he would normally lampoon. Even the funniest stuff is all old National Lampoon creations, not film originals. The stunt casting is fun (especially Daly's Murray), but the bad makeup & wigs, filmmaking insecurity & Forte's unnuanced lead performance just point to Wain not quite having a control over the material.

This film tells the story of National Lampoon. From a magazine at Harvard to all the films. Really it mostly tells about Doug Kenney. I have seen the films such as Caddyshack, National Lampoons Vacation etc... but did not really know much about the magazine or Doug Kenney. The film has a unique way of telling the story with an old Doug Kenney narrating while you see a young Doug Kenney. The older Doug Kenney not only narrates but comments on the film as well. The ending is sad and unexpected because I really knew nothing about Doug Kenney. I thought it was clever that you have youngish actors playing older actors who were most likely their inspiration. Overall this is a very interesting film that gets your attention from the beginning. I am sure die hard National Lampoon fans will pick it to pieces. But really if you want an interesting, funny and entertaining film then I would definitely pick this. If you know a bit about National Lampoon then it will help to follow the story but to be honest you would enjoy it probably better if you know nothing about it.

A Futile and Stupid Gesture: Directed by David Wain and written by Michael Coulton and John AboudThis is a biopic about Doug Kenney who helped create National Lampoon magazine when that still meant something and then wrote Animal House and Caddyshack before falling to his death from a cliff in Hawaii. This had some fourth wall breaking funny moments and it was irreverent towards the things important to the time. This was a biopic film to a tee. It was parodied in Walk Hard right down the wrong son died thing. It reminded me a lot of Walk the Line. A strong artistic personality who has a difficult time handling his relationships with women and handling drugs. He thinks he needs it to create. You've seen this before. It was easy to understand why Doug Kenney was important to comedy at the time. It was not easy to understand his relationships to others. Most of them come in and leave arbitrarily. They leave no impact on anything. It is right down the middle. Everything looks like fun but you don't really grasp why this was important. This was a middle of the road movie. If you've seen one biopic, you've seen this movie. You can easily skip it. I give this movie a C.

In the 1970s and '80s, National Lampoon's success and influence creates a new media empire overseen in part by the brilliant and troubled Doug Kenney. Fans of National Lampoon won't be disappointed from this film but for someone who never found this movies masterpieces this movie was off and gross plus boring as hell. The main leads were retards and the comedic elements weren't even that funny, A Futile and Stupid Gesture is the perfect example of a January film i'm afraid. (0/10)