A Futile and Stupid Gesture

“Being the King of Comedy is no joke.”

Doug Kenney (Will Forte) wants to make comedy nobody has made before, and in the early 1970s he and Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson) turn that hunger into National Lampoon, a magazine that reshapes American humor. David Wain tells it as a biography interrupted by an older Doug (Martin Mull) who talks straight to the camera. The one thing Doug can't quite lay out is his friendship with Henry, the serious one who stays beside him while the fame builds.