A Cellophane Man no more, John C. Reilly gets to play and sing the lead this time out, and he looks and sounds just fine. The Oscar-nominated supporting actor from Chicago plays the title character in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and a comedy star is reborn.
WH:TDCS is a playful parody, an affectionate spanking, a giggly gutting of recent musical biographies. It traces the five-decade story of a fictional music legend whose off-stage life and on-stage career bear unmistakable similarities to the events depicted in flicks like Walk the Line and Ray, among others.
No staple of the genre is left unscorned – from childhood trauma to disapproving parent, from surrender to temptation to failed marriage, from a bout with addiction to the cathartic exorcising of demons, from prison to rehab, from tragedy to triumph, from fall from grace to redemption, from Cliches R Us to Yocks R Plentiful.
Directed by Jake Kasdan (Orange County, The TV Set), who co-wrote the screenplay with his producer, comedy “emperor” Judd Apatow, the otherwise frisky and freewheeling film is disciplined enough to follow through on its narrative: it’s more in the Airplane! vein than the scattershot Scary Movie mold.
By focusing on just a few films, it keeps things narrowly specific and yet somehow still manages to deliver what seems a goosing of just about every legend-of-music biopic ever made. But it’s still anarchic enough in spirit to toss in a handful of random, anything-for-a-laugh non sequiturs.
The sublimely silly script pushes the naughtiness and outrageousness envelopes with glee, earning plenty of hearty R-rated laughs.
But a fondness for the movie tributes to Johnny Cash and Ray Charles remains in evidence throughout the lambasting.
The lyrics are consistently funny, but the songs – an array of rockabilly, country, and psychedelic song parodies written by Van Dyke Parks, Mike Viola, and Marshall Crenshaw – are wholly credible, sounding very much like the real thing.
In his showy, star-making role, Reilly, playing Dewey from teen to senior citizen, graduates from sidekick status. He displays not only impressive comedy chops – giving a performance as committed and nuanced as any in a heavy drama, with nary a wink to the audience – but has quite a way with a song (as we saw a glimpse of in Chicago) and a voice that puts one in mind of Roy Orbison.
And Jenna Fischer (of TV’s The Office), whose songs are dubbed, is also fetchingly fine and funny in the female lead.
Not all the skits, numbers, and running gags are in tune or in synch, but there are more than enough comedic highlights to be rewarding.
One in particular is a very funny sequence involving the Beatles in India, with Jack Black as Paul, Paul Rudd as John, Jason Schwartzman as Ringo, and Justin Long as George. You’ll love them, yeah yeah yeah.
Jake Kasdan’s The Dewey Cox Story joins the fraternity that already includes Rob Reiner’s This is Spinal Tap and Christopher Guest’s A Mighty Wind as spoofamentaries that are music to our funny bones.
So we’ll warble 3 stars out of 4 for a mock biopic that’s a riotous roast of musical celebrityhood.
Walk Hard will make you laugh. Hard.
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