The sweet (non) smell of success

Rating: 6/10 (13 October 2017)

Walk Hard is a parody of musical biopics such as Ray and Walk the Line. Dewey Cox is mostly based on Johnny Cash.
Dewey Cox (John C Reilly) is a poor farm boy growing up in Alabama. In 1946 as a child, Dewey accidentally chops his brother Nate in half with a machete while they were playing. You knew this would happen as his brother took part in dangerous activities while proclaiming he would live to a ripe old age.
This incident causes a rift with his father who keeps telling Dewey that the wrong son died and Dewey loses his sense of smell.
As a teenager, Dewey gains notoriety for playing the devil's music and he leaves town to make his own way at the age of 14 with his 12 year old girlfriend Edith (Kristen Wiig.)
Dewey gets his big break in a black nightclub where they play music to have sex to, as Dewey replaces the main singer at the last minute. The Hasidic Jewish record executives at the show get him an audition with a record producer where Dewey suddenly pulls out a hit song.
As the years go by Dewey tries to deal with his childhood trauma by taking a wide variety of drugs even though his drummer pleads with him not to try them. He also never pays for the drugs.
Dewey has an affair with his backing singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer) who he marries while still being married to Edith. Dewey later finds out he had lots of children.
As tastes change Dewey tries different musical genres to stay relevant, there is even a trippy, hippy animated pert in India with the Beatles.
Written by Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan, this is one of the better spoofs as it tries to be fresh and avoid lazy retreads which a lot of post Zucker Abrahams Zucker parodies has done.
Reilly is very convincing as Dewey Cox because he plays it straight, you would actually think Dewey is a real country music star which is actually alluded to in the post credit sequence.
The Beatles sequence with the bad scouse accents was the most fun. It certainly is an entertainingly silly spoof and there are a lot of star cameos.