Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Starring: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Raymond J. Barry, Margo Martindale, Kristen Wiig, Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell, Matt Besser, David Krumholtz, Harold Ramis, Jack McBrayer, Frankie Muniz, Jack White, Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Dustin Long, Jason Schwartzman

Written by: Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan

Directed by: Jake Kasdan

Distributor: Columbia Pictures

Rated: R

The most alarming thing about this Judd Apatow (Knocked Up, Superbad) and Jake Kasdan (Orange County) send-up of famous music biopics – most notably Walk The Line – is not the brief moment of in-your-face full-frontal nudity but rather how well the songs scored by Michael Andrews and sung by John C. Reilly (Chicago, Boogie Nights) work on their own.

Apatow, who wrote and produced Walk Hard, brings together his favorite Hollywood friends to accompany fictitious musician Dewey Cox through America’s musical decades, from the ‘50s to the present. What could have been another watered-down attempt at Saturday Night Live, Weird Al, Airplane!-type parody is twisted into a much more interesting model.

Watching Walk Hard is like watching a Bollywood remake of an American TV-movie based on a trashy pop music novel, with Apatow winking and guiding the comedy as it goes, always trying to retain a sympathetic voice so that you care about the characters.

At times the comedy goes broad and visual, then repeats a joke one too many times (see: ‘sink smashing’ and ‘the wrong kid died’). At other times, the joke is to make the audience realize the joke is happening (see: ‘Let’s Duet’ lyrics and montage visuals). Sometimes the joke is to make us turn to another filmgoer and ask, “did we really look and act like that in America during (blank) era?”

Dewey Cox is a man who has a talent from a young age and is continually propelled by this gift up to and including his (spot-on ridiculous, hardly parody) late-life tribute special. This doesn’t make him a smart or even a presciently-aware man, but the movie certainly does make a case for the momentum of celebrity in this country. Good supporting roles abound, including Jenna Fischer as one of many wives but true love (think June Carter-Cash) of Cox.

Many of the supporting roles have been written broadly for the sake of commentary on Hollywood beliefs. The Jewish producers who pluck Cox from obscurity have big beards, accents, and vestments. Tim Meadows as his long-time drummer and drug-enabler uses his honed SNL skills to reveal underplayed qualities of recreational drugs.

Walk Hard occasionally threatens to be one long skit with great production values and guest hosts popping in and out, but somehow it feels enough like a real movie to promote the satisfaction one gets from walking out of theater and thinking it was worth the ticket price. VS