Walking Hard, or Hardly Walking?

Rating: 7/10 (5 December 2007)

Every comedy has its moments, and this Walk Hard doesn't have anything spectacular to make it stand out from all the other passable, but ultimately forgettable, comedies. John C. Reilly plays Dewey Cox, who is basically Johnny Cash... this is, after all, a spoof of a biopic.
First of all, the fake Southern accents were a bit much. It was cute at first, but it soon became a little grating and obviously fake. Judd Apatow co-wrote this, but I get the feeling that he's better at doing "realistic" comedies. There is absolutely no sense of morality or character development in Walk Hard, unlike in Apatow's previous movies. I'm not saying that every movie needs this, but I left the theater feeling like this could have been a ten-part series on SNL or something. Every switch in scene is just a set-up for another gag, and a lot of moments in Dewey's life are skipped over. Nowhere do characters actually have a conversation with each other for a reason that doesn't involve setting up a joke.
I know that John C. Reilly is the "main man," but Tim Meadows got the most laughs from me, including a continuous drug joke. However, absolutely no one laughed at the Incredible Hulk joke. I'm not saying all the jokes were bad, but the pacing of the whole movie was off. Huge chunks of Dewey's life get ignored; Dewey's life is missing a few scenes in my opinion.
But before I start getting too negative, I want to say that this movie has some very good jokes, and some good songs, although the hip-hop one was a bit too cheesy. I know a lot of work was put into the songs, and except for the aforementioned rap song, they were well put together. I know that Jewel (what a voice!) Ghostface Killah, Lyle Lovett, and Jackson Browne contribute to the title song "Walk Hard" (and I think Jewel sings for Jenna in the duet, although I could be wrong), while Reilly sings all of his songs well. Still, is this Spinal Tap? Not quite. The best song had to be the Bob Dylan spoof, followed closely by a clever little duet with Jenna Fischer. Jenna Fischer plays Dewey's main girl (he sleeps with 411 of them according to the tagline, but we don't really see many of them). Jenna does a pretty good job, but she doesn't get a lot of serious acting here anyway. It was strange seeing in a lot of cute dresses and hair styles. Definitely not the same Jenna you're used to in The Office, that's for sure.
Oh, and if you were expecting boatloads of "Cox" jokes, the whole middle portion of the movie was seriously lacking in them. I know that Walk Hard doesn't take itself seriously at all, but I got the feeling that if it did, I would have cared more about it. All in all, a slightly above average comedy.