'Walk Hard' is best when it's bad

Leave the kids at home when you go to see this dirty little spoof of a biopic.

By Steve Persall, Times film critic
Published December 20, 2007

Review
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Grade: B
Director: Jake Kasdan
Cast: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Kristen Wiig, Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell, Raymond J. Barry, Margo Martindale, Harold Ramis
Screenplay: Judd Apatow, Jake Kasdan
Rating: R; pervasive crude humor, harsh profanity, frontal nudity, drug abuse, comical violence, sexual situations
Running time: 100 min.

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Dewey Cox will be a household name by New Year's Eve and a rockin' costume for next Halloween.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is a dirty spoof of every movie that makes the rise and fall of a superstar look the same. Writer-director Jake Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow take dramatic biopic cliches and mold them into comedy.

Walk Hard doesn't always hit the right notes, but it plucks enough to guarantee repeat viewings to memorize the catchphrases. When it's good, the movie is kind of fun. When it's being bad, it's hilarious and not for the faint-hearted.

Superb second banana John C. Reilly (Talladega Nights, Boogie Nights) plays Dewey, an amalgamation of every musician who rose from rural obscurity through land mines of vice and hard knocks. Like a melodic Forrest Gump, he goes different directions at the exact moment they matter in music, from the juke joint origins of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles to Brian Wilson's druggy paranoia and the Partridge Family's bus.

Each chapter of this absurdly fictional life is gonzo. Reilly plays everything like an actor possessed. His Golden Globe nomination for best musical/comedy actor isn't a fluke.

Every cliche is covered.

There's the loss of a sibling that haunts and inspires Dewey, but rather than the usual drowning or sawmill accident, it's a machete game that ends with, as a doctor calls it, "the worst case of someone getting cut in half I've ever seen."

There are actors much too old to play the ages they're asked, and famous names are dropped long after we recognize the celebrity.

Sex and drugs enter the picture with gratuitous glee.

There's the right woman (Jenna Fischer) and a wronged one (Kristen Wiig). There's a backup band that remains loyal beyond all logic.

No bathroom sink is safe when Dewey gets his feelings hurt, loses a gig or can't handle rehab. Dewey even has a Ray Charles-style physical challenge, the loss of his olfactory sense, or as his Mama calls it: "gone smellblind."

It is entirely possible that some viewers will wonder why others are laughing. Kasdan and Apatow pity them, playing to the part of the audience ready to tear down biographical movie myths and build insane new ones.

Maybe a better title would be: I'm Not All There.

Steve Persall can be reached at (727) 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com. Read his blog at blogs.tampabay.com/movies.

[Last modified December 18, 2007, 17:12:45]