Is ‘A Futile And Stupid Gesture’ Too Funny For Its Dark Material?

A Futile and Stupid Gesture seems fun enough at first. In fact, the Netflix Original film starts as a wryly satiric take on the stale biopic genre. From the beginning, actor Martin Mull breaks the fourth wall as the older version of Doug Kenney, the unsung hero of the ‘70s comedy revolution. Kenney was the warped mind behind The National Lampoon, Animal House, Caddyshack, and by imitation, Saturday Night Live. Now, if that’s all you know about Kenney’s life, you may want to stop reading. That’s because A Futile and Stupid Gesture manages to pull off a subversive twist on the biopic. It’s a twist that adds light and levity to an otherwise grim story.

You see, Martin Mull’s Doug Kenney is a complete fake out. The real Doug Kenney (played in the bulk of the film by Will Forte) died at the age of 33. He fell — or jumped — from a Hawaiian cliff. Kenney was in Hawaii to convalesce after suffering a mental breakdown brought on by stress, drugs, and other demons. So Doug Kenney lived a short life and he suffered a tragic death. A Futile and Stupid Gesture doesn’t shy away from this, but it also treats Kenney’s time on earth with a comedic, if not also cavalier, attitude. The film’s tone attempts to be snarky, jovial, and anarchic. The dialogue is peppered with punchlines. The moments of harrowing drama are disparate from the rest of the film. In fact, the tone is so funny at times, that I’ve heard some people complaining about how light the film is.

So is A Futile and Stupid Gesture too funny for its dark material? Is it too smug, too light, too smirking? The argument is that because Kenney did die from a possible suicide, the film should honor the seriousness of that. Furthermore, the comedic fanfare framing A Futile and Stupid Gesture may even offend people who have fought to overcome similar struggles or comparable grief. Should you laugh through a tragedy? Or does that just make you a callow asshole?

Here’s the thing: it’s not too funny. In fact, I would even argue it’s not nearly funny enough.

Let me back up and say that I do my best to go forth with a huge measure of empathy. If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that everyone in the world has experienced their own personal tragedy. Because most people keep their trauma hidden under layers of skin, bone, and psychological armor, you can’t know what this sorrow is until you’ve accidentally struck upon it with a coarse joke or an ignorant comment. So my usual inclination would be to say that if you think A Futile and Stupid Gesture is too funny for its own good, then that’s your opinion. But A Futile and Stupid Gesture is about a person whose tragedy seemed to be superseded by his intense need to stare at horror and laugh. After all, this is the same guy who thought it would be a good idea to threaten to shoot a dog in the head on a magazine cover. If anything, the Doug Kenney we meet in A Futile and Stupid Gesture would have wanted the film to go harder on his life.

When it comes to biopics as a genre, the film ideally should reflect something about the personality of the subject themselves. This is why the weird, pretty, intellectual affect of A Quiet Passion – Terence Davies’ homage to the life and death of Emily Dickinson — works so much in its favor. The film’s tone tells you something about the artist. Likewise, in order to truly nail the life and death of Doug Kenney, you have to pay homage to everything he stood for, and Doug Kenney lived a life of giddy subversion. To give him a circumspect and straight-forward biopic would betray who he was. Kenney’s first work was a silly satire of The Lord of the Rings. Every issue of The National Lampoon was a rebellious takedown of mainstream cultural institutions. Animal House and Caddyshack are slyly about overthrowing power, but overtly about joy, laughter, sex, and partying. Other artists may demand a careful, contemplative biopic. Doug Kenney, though, was devoted to making people laugh through their discomfort. He was about destroying the niceties of society in order to just have a good time.

Towards the end of the film, A Futile and Stupid Gesture attempts to strike an uneasy balance between the comedic highs of Doug Kenney’s life and his emotional lows. His troubles are marked by absurd punchlines, but then the film starts to pull those punches as it barrels towards the end. There are perfectly savage moments, though, like when Paul Scheer as Paul Schaffer appears out of nowhere to provide musical accompaniment to Bill Murray singing about all of Kenney’s demons. But by the end of the film, the story is treating Kenney with kid-gloves. It’s funny in a sad, weird way, but not quite in the savage mode favored by Kenney. Even the funeral scene seems a tad bit too sentimental for Kenney’s voice.

Everyone carries their own trauma and everyone deals with that trauma in their own way. Doug Kenney tackled his demons with brutal, unflinching, and often upsetting humor. A Futile and Stupid Gesture tries its best to do the same.

Stream A Futile and Stupid Gesture on Netflix