Alec Baldwin Is Starring in a National Lampoon Movie About Hollywood

The National Lampoon brand didn’t initially hold much luster in my eyes, aside from Christmas Vacation, and even that was more because it was a movie my whole family liked to watch together. By the time I was old enough to realize it wasn’t the only movie in that brand, I was being bombarded with movies about horny high schoolers and… hornier college students. They just felt like cheap laughs to me, but cheap in a way that I would maybe get to see some nudity if I watched, even if one of the films was airing on Comedy Central (I was desperate).

So, it was kind of shocking to grow older and learn how much history there was behind the name. Some of my comedy favorites had worked not just for the magazine that spawned the films, but also on the movies themselves. There is an air of prestige to the branding and a history that is, arguably, integral to the history of American humor. And yet, when I saw that Alec Baldwin, Nick Cannon, and Mickey Rourke were starring in a new National Lampoon film called Hollywood Hustle, all I could think was, “woof.”

Cannon will be playing an agent trying to get Baldwin, who is playing himself, to star in a new movie that just lost all of its funding. Rourke will also play himself, and, in a clip shared by The Hollywood Reporter, pulls a gun on a producer character played by Mike Hatton, who also directed the film. Insanely enough, Hatton claims in the article about the film that Rourke actually pulled a gun on him during a casting negotiation. So, yay for realism, I guess?

Baldwin, Cannon, and Rourke were all chosen specifically for their chaotic personal lives, which honestly makes the whole thing feel kind of sad. The clip feels very low-budget and shaggy. It’s not very funny, though I think it’s trying to be. It feels so unpolished that I wondered if the producers decided to release the footage early just to capitalize on Rourke’s recent GoFundMe saga, which is referenced several times in the article. I can’t say I blame them, but I also believe there’s a world where, had that not happened, we wouldn’t have heard about this film until it dropped on Tubi.

It all just feels sad. I’ve enjoyed all three of these actors before (on a sliding scale), and now they’re being reduced to cheap pops. That said, it feels like a result of their own actions. Meanwhile, National Lampoon started as something that pushed boundaries in a way that drove counter-culture, and now, it’s just pushing out a movie that looks like it would be better placed at 3 AM after an ad for Shamwow. The whole thing just bummed me out. I’m going to go see what MAD Magazine is up to and try to feel better.