Movie Review: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

by Todd Maternowski

Gag comedy is one of the hardest efforts to pull off successfully --for every Airplane! it seems there's forty or so craptacular Epic Movie's -- and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story tries, and mostly succeeds. This uneven film is occasionally cringe-worthy, but far more often it shows flashes of comic brilliance; produced by rising star Judd Apatow (The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad), Walk Hard works well as a spoof of the music industry and its excesses.

The film is in the manner of a superstar musician biopic like Walk the Line and Ray, and tells the story of singer Dewey Cox's rise from a dirt-poor farm in the South, to fame and fortune in the rock industry --and along the way, tackles every music-era cliche of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Dewey, played superbly by first-time leading man John C. Reilly, suffers through nearly every rock star stereotype: driven to the blues after accidentally slicing his more-talented brother in half with a machete ("I'm cut in half pretty bad!"), he attains instant success in the early rock n' roll industry, gets kicked out of his house for singing the devil's music, and finally goes on a long quest through rock, punk, psychedelic, and even 70s variety show phases before settling down to raise his three-dozen some-odd kids.

The movie occasionally drives a joke deep into the dirt -- the endless riffs on Dewey's last name quickly go from 'not funny' to 'somewhat irritating' -- but Apatow and director Jake Kasdan thankfully keep the film moving, rarely falling into the SNL trap of taking a 30-second gag and lingering around awkwardly for ten minutes. Taking a page from early Zucker-Abrams-Zucker comedies, the scenes and jokes come fast and furious, and the clunkers rarely make much of an impression before they're blown away by the jokes that actually work.

The key to this movie is the absolute sincerity of the actors: Reilly gives Dewey, who could easily become a cardboard cutout target for unconnected zingers, an endearing sweetness. There's none of the "tell a joke and make a ham face" acting anywhere in this movie; instead, the completely-straightforward film is acted, shot and experienced no differently than a made-for Oscar movie - just with surreal-ly funny dialogue, like taking the script for Walk the Line and replacing the word "soul" with "giraffe". All of Apatow's previous films worked well because they combined incredibly inventive vulgarity with a touching wave of sweetness: Walk Hard isn't quite as solid as those films, as the sweetness has been replaced with schmaltz. Also, while his previous movies were heavily character-driven (take the two lead characters from Superbad and switch their lines: it doesn't quite work), Walk Hard's characters, like Top Secret's or Naked Gun's, are vehicles for jokes, not the other way around.

The movie truly tries hard: Reilly performs his own singing and guitar work on 33 original songs, some of which are truly funny. Ranging over an incredible range of musical styles, the lyrics are what you'll want to tune in to: think Bob Roberts without the serious political overtones. And in a year in which Bob Dylan's rock-god status has been put under the magnifying glass, the soundtrack has a terrific satirical take on Dylan's nonsensical mid-60s folk-pop period.

The cast isn't asked to do much other than deliver madcap lines with a straight face: the two best are clearly Jenna Fischer, who plays Dewey's version of June Carter, and Raymond J. Berry, the ever-disapproving father. Berry steals the best lines in the film, including one line towards the end of the film that ranks among the funniest, most well-crafted lines ever uttered in a film. The film has no shortage of big-name stars: Eddie Vedder, Ghostface Killah, Lyle Lovett, Jackson Browne and Jewel all show up, playing themselves. There's also terrific cameos by Jack Black and Paul Rudd as a battling Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and the White Stripe's Jack White does a lively impersonation of Elvis. Warning!: there are scenes of male full-frontal nudity, although not exactly of the "walking hard" variety. With relatively few exceptions (Jonah Hill makes a markedly unfunny appearance as Dewey's brother's ghost), the cast acquits itself quite well.

Despite some uneven patches and a really weak ending, the film works well as a vicious satire of the music industry, rock star worship and musicianship in general.