Expanding on the standard documentary outline, director Douglas Tirola strings a series of in-depth interviews together with original National Lampoon magazine artwork, album excerpts and stage show footage.

Full Review | Aug 1, 2023

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead is a fun sit with a group of funny people...

Full Review | Jan 15, 2021

In this funny bio-doc, Douglas Triola traces its rollercoaster ride, detailing how some bright and twisted Ivy League grads broke all the rules of good taste and propriety...

Full Review | Jun 9, 2020

This documentary is a stunning visual achievement, with director Douglas Tirola using perhaps thousands of images to give us a real sense of the seminal, savage American satirical magazine National Lampoon.

Full Review | Oct 10, 2019

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2016

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.

Full Review | May 23, 2016

Director Douglas Tirola makes the anarchic but nonetheless productive rise of what would become a multimedia franchise great fun.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Apr 25, 2016

With this sensitive yet playful voice, Tirola shows how decades of richly comedic material found its cultural maturity.

Full Review | Apr 22, 2016

A fluke phenomenon like this couldn't happen now, but we should be grateful it ever happened at all.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 20, 2016

The film understandably assumes that everyone who had anything to do with National Lampoon was a comic genius, but that's simply not the case.

Full Review | Original Score: C+ | Jan 21, 2016

Filled with incisive interviews... director Douglas Tirola does an admirable job of telling the Lampoon's story and offering up an inside look at how it launched huge careers and went on to change the face of contemporary comedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 22, 2015

The genealogy of late 20th-century comedy, encompassing everything from Ghostbusters to Saturday Night Live, SCTV to Ferris Bueller's Day Off, can be traced to a single magazine.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 3, 2015

Everybody knows about Saturday Night Live, the long-running comedy skit show, but I sure didn't know the extent to which it was connected to National Lampoon. I learned a lot from this documentary about the magazine's big influence.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Nov 29, 2015

Reverential retrospective revisiting the rise and fall of an irreverent humor franchise.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 28, 2015

It makes it clear that the National Lampoon represents where contemporary comedy began.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Nov 12, 2015

Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead serves as the perfect time capsule of National Lampoon's run and the influence it has on comedy to this day.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Nov 11, 2015

[Chronicles] a time where you could put a dog on the cover of your magazine with a gun to its head - and the PC police weren't around to take you to task. Those were the days!

Full Review | Oct 20, 2015

A documentary about the National Lampoon does its best to capture the glory days.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Oct 16, 2015

The doc is a bit more loony than the recent SNL film, but it's still just a bit too tame - i.e. lots of talking heads - to truly represent its subject.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 9, 2015

What makes Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead feel particularly vibrant is how the Lampoon's specific art direction is put to use.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 8, 2015