Rating: 
Director: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Starring: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer
A parody of musician biopics—riffing particularly off Ray and Walk The Line—should be one of those sketches on Saturday Night Live that runs a little long and gets not quite as many laughs as you’d have hoped. To make it into a 96-minute movie would seem to guarantee it for the kind of agonizing artistic failure that is David Spade’s big-screen oeuvre.
Carried equally by the comic timing of John C. Reilly and ruthlessly smart parody that points out the stupidity of these biopics the way Airplane murdered the midair disaster genre, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story sings from start to finish (though, to extend the blunt metaphor, there’s a little trouble with the bridge about two-thirds through).
The best thing writers Judd Apatow (who co-wrote and directed The 40-Year-Old Virgin) and Jake Kasdan (who also directed here) do is hammer home every cliché that the regular biopics so formulaically introduce. The film opens with an aging Dewey Cox moodily meditating backstage as some flunky urges him to go out and perform. A makeup-aged Tim Meadows intones directly into the camera: “Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays.” Cue the feature-length flashback.
Dewey, like all great musicians who get movies made about them, starts with childhood tragedy. Before the Tragedy, his life is idyllic. “Today’s gonna be the best day ever,” his brother enthuses on the last day of their perfect childhood. “Yeah,” Young Dewey replies. “Nothin’ terrible’s ever gonna happen today.” Which turns out to be really not the case.
Similar swipes at the biopic conventions dot every scene of the film, but in such a way that it doesn’t get old, and with such balance that the parody is worth watching as a story at the same time that it’s too obvious and stupid to be taken seriously. Of note: 40-something John C. Reilly plays Dewey from age 14, highlighting another common flaw in these biopics. 
Jenna Fischer is hilarious in the June Carter Cash role, crafted here as a bipolar virginal sexpot. Tim Meadows’ handling of the various scenes that mark Dewey’s drug spiral are hilarious, as are a number of unusual cameos, including a (credited) Frankie Muniz of Malcolm in the Middle as Buddy Holly and the (uncredited) cameos of Paul Rudd, Justin Long, Jason Schwartzman, and Jack Black The faux four go to town on the Beatles’ Liverpool accents, and just kill, though it’s gotta be said, Jack Black is a seriously weird choice for Paul McCartney.
The film shuffles through all of rock history, and around the time Dewey is having a breakdown that riffs off Brian Wilson’s mental collapse in the late ’60s, the film starts losing momentum. It picks up pretty quickly though, and works a nimble recovery. If the hugely talented Reilly were a gymnast, you’d say he nailed the dismount.
The film is a scream, and the songs, whether filled with double entendres or just mocking various musical styles are spot-on. There’s real smarts behind a film filled with a lot of more obvious laughs. Best example: Dewey gets signed because the one night he fills in as lead singer for a black jump band in a black nightclub—doing the ailing singer’s act note for note, down to the stage patter—there are label execs in the audience. Singers like Elvis Presley have been accused of taking black style, and sometimes specific songs by lesser-known black artists, and catapulting to fame. Here, the writers literally have the white rock star stealing a black musician’s act, a perfect dig that is not paraded as loudly as other gags.
Despite all the funny, I worry this film is in danger of going unnoticed for a lack of big box office stars. This is one of the funniest movies of the year, especially for any fan of rock and roll’s 60-year history.
