Finding this little gem felt like finding a full size Snickers bar after you thought all the good Halloween candy had been eaten. It has quite a few scenes that are laugh out loud funny plus moments where you can see and reminisce about old movies and the casts sitting around that were such huge names back in the day. It is not a perfect movie, the end has a terrible fact but they try and keep it funny, nonetheless.
The movie follows Doug Kenney, played by Will Forte who is kind of hard to like on The Last Man on Earth, but does a better job here. They do a clumsy start which I think was forced to show a funeral giving the whole movie a somber filling, and I think maybe the death of his brother/sister was something that was always lingering although it is not really discussed. The real start to the movie happens a few seconds later and this time he is in college, Harvard to be exact, and we are told of his meeting Henry Beard who becomes a lifelong friend. They end up writing for the Harvard Lampoon and this gives Doug the idea to create their own magazine after they graduate. Beard goes along only to humor Kenney as it never appears that he is as sold on the idea, but he does stick with it. Doug is a genius and the magazine succeeds after awhile, which only puts more pressure to make more and before long they are doing a radio show once a week that lasts an hour. This of course succeeds as well.
It is just amazing that the magazine gathered so many future greats in its youth, Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, amongst so many others. By 1978, the magazine had made them rich and Kenney needed more, he headed to California and somewhere along the way wrote Animal House which made Belushi a household name. This was the highest grossing comedy movie until Ghostbusters came out in 1984, with Bill Murray, so there was still a connection. All this success went to his head and this made him a flaky individual, regularly taking off and not telling others of his whereabouts.
His next movie was Caddyshack which he wrote to tell the upper snobs that they weren't better than his Dad who was a tennis pro at a country club. He just about lost his mind when critics didn't label Caddyshack another masterpiece. Chevy Chase goes with him to "get away" as the two have become good friends but Chevy needs to get back to work. Eventually, he is left alone after his wife visits him briefly. It is believed that he fell "accidentally" from a ledge to his death, but the scene shows his shoes and glasses neatly set up like he was hanging there for a while.
This was a man who burned bright and fast. He still had so much to create and do, but once you start on that path of drugs, it is very hard to get off. In the movie they showed him very clearly enjoying as much cocaine as he could afford to buy. Who knows what else he might have produced for us to enjoy, but Animal House and Caddyshack are heralded as some of the best comedies of their time.
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