Directed by Jake Kasdan
Written by Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow
Starring John C. Reilly and Jenna Fischer
Classification: 14A
**½
The big discovery of last year's comedy, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, was that the pug-faced character actor John C. Reilly is funny, more than capable of going shtick-to-shtick with the movie's star, Will Ferrell.
Talladega Nights was produced by Judd Apatow, who can presumably do whatever he wants in Hollywood these days, so it was only a matter of time before Reilly ( Boogie Nights, Chicago) got his own comedy. Apatow is the both the producer and co-writer (with director Jake Kasdan) of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a parody of such formulaic musical biographies as Walk the Line, the 2005 biopic of Johnny Cash, that follows the rise, fall and redemption of a country-rock singer. Like other Apatow comedies ( The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up), Walk Hard is a character-driven, plot-light comedy peppered with juvenile raunchiness.
Mostly, it rests on Reilly, who brings full-throttle commitment and an appealing soulfulness to his role of dim-bulb Everyman rock star: Imagine Ernest Borgnine with an impish streak. The opening scene shows us the aged Dewey Cox backstage prior to his farewell performance before we flash back to his beginnings in rural Alabama. After his older, more talented brother dies in a freak accident, young Dewey (Conner Rayburn) must live with the guilt and his supermean father's regular reminder that “the wrong son died.”
Flash-forward to Dewey at 14, now played by Reilly (complete with beer gut and receding hairline), who is performing with his band for a high-school concert. True to the genre, his innocuous-sounding pop music inexplicably causes male classmates to punch preachers and girls to tear open their blouses. After being kicked out of his home, Dewey elopes with his fiancée ( Saturday Night Live's Kristen Wiig) and heads off to become a music legend.
The spoof checks off familiar rock 'n' roll bio moments, not only from Cash, but from Buddy Holly, Ray Charles and Elvis Presley. The movie manages a couple of popcorn-spitting-funny jokes for each biographical decade the film covers, though typically it's no better than moderately clever. (Some of the jokes about erotic black dancers and avuncular Jewish managers feel more deserving of a shoulder shrug than a laugh.)
Then there's the repetitive middle section, which, following Walk the Line, traces the adulterous sexual tension between Dewey and his backup singer, Darlene ( The Office's Jenna Fischer); it's salvaged by a double-entendre-loaded duet (“In my dreams, you're blowin' me … some kisses.”) Consistent with the rock-biography genre, the narrative gets more choppy and muddled during the drug-addled sixties, but the movie's highlight is Dewey's trip to India to meet and drop acid with the squabbling Beatles (Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman). The rest of the movie is similarly studded with fake and real celebrity cameos – Frankie Muniz as Buddy Holly, Jack White as a psychotic Elvis Presley and Eddie Vedder, Jewel Kilcher and Jackson Browne as themselves. A team of songwriters, including such luminaries as Van Dyke Parks and Marshall Crenshaw, provides the soundtrack, which punches above the usual musical-spoof weight, and Reilly's Roy Orbison-like croon is more than credible. Slapped together with more energy than care, Walk Hard falls short of the best examples of the musical parody genre, Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind, but Apatow proves again that he's in tune with moviegoers. In a season loaded with serious films about war and loss, there's bound to be an audience out there looking for some undemanding holiday laughs.
