I always like to give a little history of my relationship to the material when I write these reviews/recaps because I think it's only fair I show my biases. In this case, I have both anecdotal and direct history with National Lampoon, specifically with their Radio Hour.
A few years before I was born, my parents lived out in the middle of nowhere. (We lived there a few years after I was born, too.) In order to hear National Lampoon Radio Hour, they had to take their radio out on the porch and fiddle with the antenna until they could—just barely—get the signal. I grew up hearing, "That's not funny, that's sick," and not really understanding where it came from.
Years later, as a pre-teen, I was in a Hastings with my parents. That was a books-and-records store, one of my favorite places to go. Dad found a box set of the Radio Hour and bought it so I could finally share the humor. We listened, and at the point someone said, "There's a lobster loose!" I said, "That sounds like Bill Murray." (I was an SNL fan.) Dad was pleased. "That is Bill Murray!" he told me.
Thus many National Lampoon bits became part of my regular dialect. I could recite the entire "A man walks into a nightclub with a beautiful girl on his arm..." bit. I still sometimes sing, "Give Ireland back to the Irish." I love Flash Bazbo. A lot of it is hugely irreverent, but that's part of the fun—you're laughing almost because you know you shouldn't.
Okay, so there's the history, and here's this movie, which focuses on the short life of one of National Lampoon's creators Doug Kenney. I think you probably have to have a love of and interest in the material to enjoy the movie, but it's impressive the talent they got, too: Domhnall Gleeson plays Doug's fellow founder Henry Beard and nails the American accent by way of sounding (and, thanks to the wig, looking a little like) Jesse Eisenberg. Martin Mull plays the narrator, an older Doug if Doug had lived that long. And there is a list of other known faces (and voices) as well, all shining in their own small parts, as this movie is clustered with personalities and so none are given too much time.
I do wonder how Chevy Chase feels about his old co-star Joel McHale playing him, though?
Will Forte plays Doug, and of course I have no idea whether he's at all like the actual guy. If he is, I'd say Doug was a difficult personality. Not in the way of being in-your-face difficult; if anything, he was self-deprecating a lot of the time. But not easy to work with thanks to a lack of discipline, and not easy to live with because of an obsessive streak as well as being prone to addiction. His refusal to face problems lent to his downward spiral. It's a damn shame, really. That's what this movie drives home.
If you were to ask, "Is it a good movie?" I don't know what I'd say. It's a curious kind of movie, and I think I enjoyed it? But I'm not entirely sure. I would like to read the book it's based on. I suppose any time a movie makes me want to engage the source material, that's a good thing. I really don't know if it's a "good" movie, but it will stay with me for a long time.
No comments:
Post a Comment