Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

How I missed this hilarious comedy on the first trip around, I'll never know. Streamed it the other night. John C. Reilly is phenomenal as he portrays any number of Rock gods of the 1950' through the early 2000's. Chiefly, he plays Johnny Cash. I found the script and film-making wonderful, as a satire on rock cliches. Within it are takeoffs on The Beatles, Bob Dylan, June Carter Cash (Jenna Fischer) and many more. Even more amazing is that Reilly recorded 33 original songs for the movie with his backup band. And they are in varied styles. He handles all with aplomb. And so, it is a plum!

Walk Hard is a parody of musical biopics such as Ray and Walk the Line. Dewey Cox is mostly based on Johnny Cash.Dewey Cox (John C Reilly) is a poor farm boy growing up in Alabama. In 1946 as a child, Dewey accidentally chops his brother Nate in half with a machete while they were playing. You knew this would happen as his brother took part in dangerous activities while proclaiming he would live to a ripe old age.This incident causes a rift with his father who keeps telling Dewey that the wrong son died and Dewey loses his sense of smell.As a teenager, Dewey gains notoriety for playing the devil's music and he leaves town to make his own way at the age of 14 with his 12 year old girlfriend Edith (Kristen Wiig.)Dewey gets his big break in a black nightclub where they play music to have sex to, as Dewey replaces the main singer at the last minute. The Hasidic Jewish record executives at the show get him an audition with a record producer where Dewey suddenly pulls out a hit song.As the years go by Dewey tries to deal with his childhood trauma by taking a wide variety of drugs even though his drummer pleads with him not to try them. He also never pays for the drugs.Dewey has an affair with his backing singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer) who he marries while still being married to Edith. Dewey later finds out he had lots of children.As tastes change Dewey tries different musical genres to stay relevant, there is even a trippy, hippy animated pert in India with the Beatles.Written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan, this is one of the better spoofs as it tries to be fresh and avoid lazy retreads which a lot of post Zucker Abrahams Zucker parodies has done.Reilly is very convincing as Dewey Cox because he plays it straight, you would actually think Dewey is a real country music star which is actually alluded to in the post credit sequence.The Beatles sequence with the bad scouse accents was the most fun. It certainly is an entertainingly silly spoof and there are a lot of star cameos.

Considering how bad, the parody genre has gotten as of late. I was blown away by how good this movie was. It's so good, that somewhat belongs in the same levels of filmmakers: David Zucker, Monty Python and Mel Brooks's finest works. Directed by Jake Kasdan, and written and produced by Judd Apatow. 'Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story' tells the story of the hard-knock life of musician Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) from his rags-to-riches beginnings, his raise as a megastar country star, his struggle with drug abuse, and his redemption in his later life with his later-wife, Darlene Madison (Jenna Fischer). If this story sounds very familiar. The plot echoes the storyline of 2005's Johnny Cash biopic, 'Walk the Line' and 2004's Ray Charles biopic 'Ray'. While, Walk Hard mostly heavily references, those two films, there were also a various amounts of other biopics that the film used as inspiration, such as 2004's 'Beyond the Sea', about singer, Bobby Darin and 2007's 'I'm not There' about musician, Bob Dylan to name some. The film also includes elements of the lives and careers of Roy Orbison, Glen Campbell, Jerry Lee Lewis, Donovan, James Brown, Jim Morrison, Conway Twitty, Neil Diamond, and Brian Wilson. The film portrays fictional versions of artists Buddy Holly (Frankie Muntz), The Big Bopper (John Ennis), Elvis Presley (Jack White) and the Beatles: Paul McCarthy (Jack Black), George Harrison (Justin Long), John Lennon (Paul Rudd), and Ringo Starr (Jason Schwartzman). Additionally, some real-life artists were filmed, playing themselves, including Eddie Vedder, Jewel Kicher, Lyle Lovett and Ghostface Killah. In addition, the film feature several musical styles such as the late 1950's R&B movement, the early 1960's California Sound, the late 1960s Vietnam War Protest Folk-music style, the early 1970s, Space Oddity and last 1970s punk rock movement. Despite the humorous approach to the music genre, the film was so well crafted, that the parody music feature for the films became big hits on their own right. Songs like 'Walk Hard', 'Take my Hand', 'Guilty as charged', "Let's Duet' & others was nominated for both a Grammy and Golden Globe Award. Songwriter, Michael Andrews and Jon Reilly recorded 40 original songs, which 33 are featured in the movie. All with different music styles. That's pretty impressed. Not only that, but John Reilly sang most of the song. Who knew that John Reilly, not only was a gifted comedian, but also an amazing singer!? I didn't see it, coming. However, Singer Angela Correa did had to provide the voice of Darlene Madison Cox as Jenna couldn't pull it off. Despite that, she did pretty well for the role, that she was given. Honestly, most of the actors in this film, were funny in their own right. As a biopic parody, the movie is very funny. It hit every funny bone for me. Very few misses. If the movie had any faults; I can say, the later unrated version is very disappointing. Adding more juvenile gratuitous nudity and gross sight toilet humor doesn't really make your movie, any better. It's not fan service that most people want to see. Even women and gay people might think it's too much. Also, some of the jokes were a bit tasteless like the whole kid getting killed by a machete fight. Making fun of Johnny Cash's real-life boyhood tragedy is a bit much. It's somewhat offensive. It's shock value that really fails to gain any point of reaction than annoyed. It really doesn't add much to the film that the semi-smart dialogue double sexual entendres hasn't done better. If anything, it just makes the film plot go slower. It's no wonder, Sony felt like to cut over twenty four minutes out of the original film, when it was released. It really did make the film, seem way too long. In my opinion, just go see, the original version over this. Other negative elements of this film is how the movie doesn't really bring anything new to the table. The movie relates way too much on being clichés to be, really that funny. It felt a bit tiresome at parts, because it's predictable. It's so unlike the other comedy music films like 2003's 'A Mighty Wind' or 1984's 'This is Spiral Tap' that relies on some music movie clichés, but also brings something new to the genre to work with. Those films were a little more sophistical with its humor. You really don't know, what's going to happen in those films. Overall: Because of that, I felt like 'Walk Hard' could had been something, really great, but in the end, falls somewhere near above average. Still, I can highly recommended, seeing this film.

"Walk Hard" is another film from the Judd Apatow gang who brought you such inane gems as "Anchorman", "Talladega Nights", "40-Year-Old Virgin" and so on. In the same vein, you'll get a wacky blend of absurd humor, parody, satire and sexual gags not suitable for young kids. Note: I saw the unrated version which has a few gags featuring, among other things, one or two closeup shots of a man's hangy down thing (haha IMDb won't let me type w.a.n.k.e.r).The tone of the whole film is very tongue-in-cheek and satirical, with a good zinger at least once every 30 seconds. Perhaps even more fun is spotting all the cameo appearances by famous personalities such as director Harold Ramis (playing "L'Chaim" the Jewish industrialist), Paul Rudd ("John Lennon"), Jack Black ("Paul McCartney"), Jack White from the White Stripes ("Elvis") and Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam (playing himself). Other actors from SNL, The Office and Big Bang Theory add to the star-spotting extravaganza.The story is mostly a shameless mock-up of Johnny Cash's biopic "Walk the Line" but with scenes parodied from other musical biopics like "Ray" and "La Bamba". A goofily predictable rise to fame of a music star story, this film mercilessly skewers the clichés, with over-the-top melodramatic scenes like the bigwig producer telling Dewey he sucks and will never make it, only to start singing his praises after Dewey strums 2 chords. Other gags are even more silly, like some of the corny visual wordplays in "Airplane!" (for example there's a dramatic scene where he shouts "I can't fight the temptations!" and runs into the hallway where we see ...guess who?... singing their motown hit "My Girl"). From the outset all the way to its conclusion this movie is pure silliness.If you like 'em that way then have no fear, you won't be let down. However if you're expecting something more along the lines of the more subtle yet equally hilarious Christopher Guest comedies ("Spinal Tap", "A Mighty Wind", "Best in Show"), then you might start to tire of the fast paced, deliberately predictable gags we see here. "Walk Hard" is an enjoyable experience but probably not intended to be a cult classic music comedy like the aforementioned Guest films which spawned an entire genre of sophisticated comedy (if you can consider a film called "A Mighty Wind" to be sophisticated). "Walk Hard" is just pure mindless entertainment, and it delivers. Watch it on days when you just want to shut your brain off and have some fun. I knocked off a few points because the nudity & prolonged sex scenes can get a little distracting from this otherwise silly romp (a 10-second closeup of a man's crankshaft might cross the line of discomfort).