A solid parody, but over-produced and over-the-top

Rating: 6/10 (24 April 2008)

Apatow Productions had a terrific 2007 and then "Walk Hard" happened. At least they know it--$35 M budget and a total gross of less than $20 M. While the musical biopic parody is an idea that certainly among other parody options is fitting for this decade, Apatow productions learned that success will come with originality. That and not to a release a film like this at Christmas time.
"Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" stars John C. Reilly in an hour and a half romp through his life as a musician beginning in the 1950s. Spoofing all other music biopics, Cox finds his way into love affairs, drugs and much much more. A lot of the parody jokes get overplayed and redundant, but some are definitely spot on. It definitely feels like an Apatow script, only this time with director/writer and friend of Apatow's Jake Kasden getting his say.
"Walk Hard" is star-studded. There are an unbelievable amount of cameos from Apatow's trademark crew as well as stars from Saturday Night Live and others not usually in his movies that make an appearance in the film. The amount of familiar faces makes the film seem incredibly over-produced and some of the shortest scenes appear to have an unnecessary amount of money put into them.
The film does have more humor in many respects than "Talladega Nights," but by no means comes close to matching up with "Knocked Up" and "Superbad." While those two films are somewhat more poignant and true-to-life, "Walk Hard" relies excessively on ridiculousness to be funny, more so than any of the Apatow predecessors.
In short, "Walk Hard" is funny and at times clever, but mostly just over-the-top and dumb. Every turn is a left turn and while many are applaudable, some are just downright weird.