Rating: 4 /5 stars

Directed by David Wain (“Wet Hot American Summer”), “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” chronicles the life of Doug Kenney (Will Forte, “Nebraska”), the pioneer behind the pinnacle of satirical comedy in America and what would eventually become the National Lampoon. The story follows Kenney and his best friend, Lampoon co-founder, Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson, “American Made”), as they go from Harvard spoof comedy writers to running what many would consider to be the most popular magazine to come out of the late 1970s and ultimately give birth to a completely new wave of comedy.

Despite being a Netflix original, it is interesting how flawlessly cinematic it feels, and that statement has a lot more meaning than one would think. Since so much media is easily accessible through cellphones now, the idea of a movie having that extra special feeling of going to a cinema has kind of been lost on viewers as a generation. Since Netflix is great at making money, along with the fact that creators do not have the same restrictions that they do with movie studios, this has attracted a lot of extremely talented professionals to their doors. David Wain is one of them.

This film is not necessarily the brilliant satire that everyone thought it was going to be, but that is not the point of the movie. Despite being a comedy, and a hilarious one at that, this movie has a surprising amount of deep, dark, tragic moments that typically come with the whole rise to fame. Seeing what actually comes with that fame has made projects such as “BoJack Horseman” as great as they are. While that may cause a bit of a grievance from viewers who are expecting a straight-up comedy, it really is to this film’s benefit because it makes the film feel a lot more tender and personal.

Just because it is not a straight-up slapstick comedy does not mean the elements are not there. This movie has a lot of great comedic moments. Granted, many of the laughs are as unintentional as they are intentional, but that plays into what made National Lampoon as popular as it was. Their willingness to go to such uncomfortable and, often times, gross and humiliating depths that were so far outside the norm during that time brought out a humorous sensibility that people did not even realize they had.

While this movie does have a supremely solid batch of actors who all do decently in their roles, the driving force of this movie is the relationship between Forte and Gleeson. It is a match that should not even work in the first place. Their chemistry is fantastic, but rather than it being the typical serious friend-whacky guy relationship, the characters of Doug and Henry are built up as these two people who both have a lot more layers to them than meets the eye. It makes the ups of this film feel great and the downs effectively sad when they happen.

Despite some severe miscastings when it comes to the actors playing the various celebrities that pop up in this movie, “A Futile and Stupid Gesture” is a sign that Netflix is getting on the right track when it comes to their original films. It is an amazingly dark tale of friendship and loneliness in addition to being a biopic story.

Photo provided by Netflix via YouTube.com