Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
DIR: Jake Kasdan • WRI: Judd Apatow, Jake Kasdan. • PRO: Judd Apatow, Jake Kasdan, Clayton Townsend • DOP: Uta Briesewitz • ED: Tara Timpone, Steve Welch. • DES: Jefferson Sage • CAST: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Raymond J. Barry, Margo Martindale, Kristen Wiig, Chip Hormess, Conner Rayburn, Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell, Matt Besser

Walk Hard is a spoof of the musical biopic genre, with particular influences from Ray and Walk the Line. It concerns the rise, fall, rise, fall, fall, and rise of Dewey Cox, a singer-songwriter played by John C. Reilly, whose career spans decades and takes in all the popular music of those decades, from his beginning, learning guitar from an old bluesman, to the sampling of his major hit, Walk Hard, by a rapper. 

The film somewhat handicaps itself from the outset: it’s not easy for a comedy to get over an opening that involves a child accidentally killing another child, even if it’s in a silly way. This leads to a bigger problem, because although biopics are in many ways fit to ridicule (for self-importance, over-simplifying, or using clichés), they’re also about real people, and it’s hard in this instance not to think of the death of Ray Charles’s brother – especially when the death is closely followed by Dewey losing his sense of smell. 
 
But despite the problematic start, the film improves. There are some great moments, and digs at, for example, ‘60s counter-culture (and the self-righteousness and posturing of many of those who lived through it), and awful awards shows (are there any other kind?), but it could use more moments like that. It also makes fun of the many conventions of biopics, as with the starry-eyed look Dewey gets when he gets an idea for a song, grown-up actors playing teens, the neglected first wife who keeps telling him he’s never going to make it, and the inevitable trip to rehab. Among the high points are the appearances by familiar performers clearly miscast as legends, although watching it does get uncomfortable, as it does when you have to watch minor celebrities impersonate major celebrities.
 
It’s directed by Jake Kasdan (who’s made too few films since Zero Effect), produced by Judd Apatow, director of Knocked Up and The 40-Year Old Virgin, and written by both. Kasdan and Apatow are pretty talented, but the film’s biggest strength is John C. Reilly, and it’s great to see him in a starring role. He’s also ably supported by a cast of familiar faces, and in particular Jenna Fischer (from the US version of The Office), playing the artistic muse/saviour/tease.
 
The songs are good, at least in the sense that they sound like the kind of songs they’re supposed to be (I’m ashamed to admit I recognised the strains of Billy Joel’s Piano Man in one Bob Dylan-type song), and they’re even funny at times. It’s a fun film, but it could’ve been funnier.  It doesn’t follow the reproducing-scenes-from-other-movies method of Scary Movie and its devil spawn, but it also lacks the ten-gags-a-second style of the classic spoofs, like Airplane. Then again, it’s also possible the clichés aren’t as readily recognisable as in other genres .

Tim Hanan
(Read biog here)

Rated 16 (see IFCO website for details)
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is released on 18th January 2008
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story – Official website