A Blight on Apatow's near flawless record

Rating: 1/10 (26 December 2007)

I gave Walk Hard a chance, I really did. I love Judd Apatow's work, as producer, writer or director. Knocked Up is one of my favorite comedies and Superbad is up there on the list. Orange County, directed by the director of Cox, was a decent film but wasn't great. But still, it had it's moments and was watchable. Normally, I can base a movies value on the names associated with it and their previous work , in fact that's the main reason I saw this movie. But sadly, it doesn't live up to anything they have been associated with prior (maybe Kicking and Screaming).
To start, I'll list the things that are good about the movie: The directing has a certain quality to it. Considering the director's previous work, I guess that makes sense.
It's not too far from a shot for shot remake of Walk The Line. Which I count as a good thing because that's what your going for in a spoof/parody.
They did a good job with the bio-pic aspect of it, which just means that they can see the humor in the constant ups and downs of a rock star's life.
Some, and I mean SOME, of the lines are good. I did chuckle and the Elvis part.
Now the bad: The first line of the movie is "I need Cox", I a movie were the main character, not just that but the movie, is named Dewey Cox, you can really only use that once. But they do it again and again.
The movie fools you into thinking it's a Jim Abrahams/David Zucker spoof (creators of cult comedies like Airplane!, Hot Shots! Top Secret! and Naked Gun) but becomes a Jason Friedberg/Aaron Seltzer spoof (creator of such Oscar worthy masterpieces as Scary Movie, Scary Movie 2, Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, Date Movie, Epic Movie and the upcoming, and sure to be critical success, Meet The Spartans).
There's a monkey joke, enough said about that.
A poor representation of famous individuals, like Buddy Holly, Elvis, and the Beatles. If Buddy Holly has to tell me that he's Buddy Holly it's a bad movie. Even Jackson Browne, Lyle Lovett and Eddie Vedder are caricature of themselves. Basically the movie goes for the, "haha they are people pretending to be these people and they are doing it badly!That's funny!". As I mentioned before, Elvis was the only good one because I could see Elvis doing the "look out man!" thing, but even that gets ruined by a line that follows it that is basically "Only two kinds of people know it(referring to Karate), the Chinese and the King. And I'm the King." We get it you're Elvis Presley.
A monkey joke, it needs repeating, monkey jokes died in middle school.
The pacing of the movie interrupt scenes that could be used for character development and story to give you scenes feigning what could be considered important story points. It completely negates the scene prior. Example, Dewey Cox is in a hotel room living it up after his first taste of weed, he is on the phone with his wife. She begins to tell him that she feels a distance. Now normally, a Knocked Up type comedy would use this moment to bring down the fun for a moment. Use it to give us a real insight into the relationship of the characters, thus creating a more interesting level to any involvement later on. An Airplane type comedy would use this moment to do constant sight gags, or create a fake sense of pain increasing any sort of visual of audible humor later on. But instead it goes a complete different route when there's a knock the door. He hangs up and there is no development of his relationship with his wife or any really funny sight gags or quick quips. Instead we are treated to a story from Dewey's dad about how Dewey's music inadvertently killed his mom. Oh dear, his mom is dead due to his music. How plausible. That's not funny, that's Epic Movie. I shouldn't have expected more from a movie that has a little kid being chopped in half and still talking, with his legs just standing there. The whole thing leaves me confused as to what this movie wants me to find humorous.
I fail to see the humor in this movie, an occasional chuckle and smirk does not make this movie worthy of viewing. It could have been a lot better. Less irony and more funny. Airplane!, Naked Gun, Top Secret!, that's how this movie should have been. An Abrahams/Zucker-type movie making fun of bio-pics done by Apatow and Kasdan, that would be magic. But instead we are treated to a movie that suffers from schizophrenia, it's backed the names behind good comedies like Orange County and Knocked Up, It's titled like a Will Ferrel "Insert title: the story of insert guy's name" movie with none of the humor, it has the premise of an Abrahams/Zucker film, but is written like a Friedberg/Seltzer. The whole comes off as messy and leaving you feeling unfulfilled. Save your money and rent Apatow's back catalog and hope and pray that the train of suck that left Dewey Cox will derail and Apatow will be cool again. I think Kasdan might be lost though.