The movie revolves around the history of the American comedy production and publishing company, National Lampoon. The film tries to shed light on this company from its inception in the seventies until 2010, and includes more archive shots.
Critics Of "National Lampoon: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead"
Chicago Reader
October 08, 2015
The movie is an orgy of boomer self-congratulation -- yet it lacks even that movie's ironic notation of how a bastion of white-male privilege managed to pass itself off as radical.
This is a celebration, not an examination, and those looking for a critique of the ribald publication, radio show, off-Broadway play, and film franchise [should go] elsewhere.
A frenetic, rough-edged, unapologetic tribute to the Lampoon, featuring some amazing archival footage, nifty bits of animation and dozens of straightforward talking-head interviews that crackle and pop.
The Sunday Age
April 25, 2016
Director Douglas Tirola makes the anarchic but nonetheless productive rise of what would become a multimedia franchise great fun.
Tirola's documentary is brisk and entertaining, if not especially thoughtful. But then neither was the magazine, whose militant bad taste spawned "Saturday Night Live" and so much more.
Drunk Stoned Brilliant did convince me that the Lampoon has a colorful, even important, journalistic history, and that some extraordinary talents were involved, however often they were drugged out.
