Walk Hard = laugh hard

Rating: 9/10 (24 January 2008)

Movie parodies can be a tough art to master. The best ones, like "Flying High", "Hot Shots", "Naked Gun", "Top Secret", "Scary Movie" and "Team America: World Police" cleverly poke fun at the pomposities of their chosen genre, and often turn out to be more memorable than the films that inspired them. The bad ones  like the reprehensible "Date Movie"- simply re-create the movies they're trying to parody, with not real satirical insight. Fortunately, "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" lands firmly (no pun intended) into the former category. WH: TDCS is a parody of the good, but overly earnest and reverential music bio-pics "Ray" and "Walk the Line". While the plot of "Walk Hard" borrows heavily from "Walk the Line" (though the promotional poster is a parody of the iconic Jim Morrison image), it manages to be more than just 'Johnny Cash with dick jokes'. The film had fantastic pedigree; it's co-written by Judd Apatow, the man behind such hilarious comedies as"Knocked Up" and "Superbad"; it stars perennial sidekick John C. Reilly as Cox, Jenna Fischer (from the US version of "The Office") and a slew of cameos, including Jonah Hill (as the ghost of Dewey's dead brother), Jack White as Elvis and Paul Rudd and Jack Black as Lennon and McCartney respectively. While "Ray" and "Walk the Line"  which had remarkably similar plots  both only featured significant periods of the lives of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash respectively, "Walk Hard" traces Dewey Cox from a precocious 14-year-old, who leaves his Alabama home with his 12-year-old sweetheart (though Reilly and his on-screen girlfriend Kristin Wiig are at least twice that age) after accidentally chopping his brother in half with a machete(which leads to his father constantly complaining that the wrong son died), right through to his final performance at 71. What happens in between is what makes this movie so hilarious. After leaving Alabama he makes it big with the country song "Walk Hard", is hired by a group of ridiculously stereotypical Jews, leaves his wife and their growing number of kids to tour the country, gets hooked on drugs (despite his black drummer warning him about the side effects, which makes Dewey want to do them more), starts an affair with Darlene (Fischer), throws tantrums (including a propensity for ripping out sinks and letting the water fly), has ridiculously large orgies, does LSD with the Beatles (which includes a nice "Yellow Submarine"-inspired animated sequence), breaks up and reunites with Darlene, accidentally chops his father in half and reconnects with his fifty children and grandchildren before his final performance. Like all true artists, Cox manages to adapt to the times. While he starts out as a country singer, he has numerous career changes, including singing protest songs for midgets, nonsensical Dylan-esquire songs, a hippie phase  which culminates in a hilariously bigger-is-better studio recording (including Didgeridoo players, a massive choir and goats), before a rejuvenation inspired by rapper Little Nutsack, who samples Walk Hard in one of his songs. If you're familiar with "Knocked Up", "Superbad" and the various other frat pack movies, you'll know what to expect from "Walk Hard". While it doesn't have the underlying heart of Apatow's last two movies, it doesn't need it. "Walk Hard" is a straight-out parody, and, for the most part, it's hilarious. The songs complement the parody, especially the duet by Dewey and Darlene, which is full of lingering sexual references, punctuated by tactical phrasing. Reilly  who sung in "Chicago" (mostly remembered for his solo number "Mr. Cellophane) handles the singing duties well. He isn't as good as Joaquin Phoenix  who sounded almost like Cash in "Walk the Line", but he still does well. Unlike "This is Spinal Tap", which was a savage satire of a fictional English Heavy Metal band, its band members and the ridiculousness of their lifestyles, "Walk Hard' doesn't set out to make fun of Dewey Cox, only the absurdity of overly serious and pretentious bio-pics. "Walk Hard" achieves this goal, and manages to make it the best music parody since Spinal Tap, and one of the best parodies since the golden days of "Flying High" and "Naked Gun".