Somewhere between "A Mighty Wind" and "Airplane!"

Rating: 7/10 (9 November 2014)

"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).