"I can't build you a candy house, it will fall down. The sun will melt the candy"

Rating: 8/10 (22 December 2007)

I have a special place in my heart for the spoof film. The original Airplane is a legendary comedy. Sadly the genre has been dying, for every Naked Gun there is an Epic Movie. Walk Hard breathes a little bit of life into the classic spoof genre. It isn't a laugh a minute picture but you will laugh during it.
I was not a huge fan of Walk the Line. I felt that Mangold and crew didn't try to show us anything about Cash rather than his pills and his women. You can all most take any musician and give them the same basic plot line, Walk Hard parodies a genre which deserves a spoofing. It is brilliant in the fact that it realizes that our classic musicians have more to them than their bio pics would suggest.
John C.Reilly stars as Dewey Cox, a country boy who goes into music after killing his brother in a machete fight.His judging Dad hates him and he decides to move out with his twelve year old girlfriend. Cox gets his big break when headlines at a night club when the main attraction breaks his guitar fingers and has a sore throat. After producing his record breaking single Walk Hard, he spirals into the cliché life of drugs, women and vice.
The music here actually isn't bad. I was expecting silly songs but it actually has a half way decent soundtrack to it. If Reilly really did the singing he mimicked the Cash style fairly well. Reilly has more restrain than Ferrel or Jack Black does. He isn't off the wall with his character and that makes the punchlines faster and more funny. There is a great scene where Cox doesn't realize he is having sex with a woman, Ferrel would have drawn attention to himself but Reilly sets up the joke. I have to give Reilly credit it's hard to do to excel in both drama and comedy but he does it.
Tim Meadows of SNL comes back in a major way as Dewey's drummer. He is the but of the stoner jokes but he does them with energy and style which makes tired drug jokes fresh and funny. The scene where he is popping Viagra at the end had me in tears.
Walk Hard is over the top and it doesn't take it's self seriously. I feel that it wasn't marketed correctly. The trailers don't lead you to believe that it is a classic spoof.