Has its moments but it is not funny enough to support the running time and ends up being "OK" but not much more than that

Rating: Null/10 (8 January 2009)

As an grown man, Dewey Cox waits behind the scenes to go onto stage for the performance of his life. While the introductions are being done, he finds a suitably dimly light corner, strikes a "troubled" pose and starts to reminisce about the life that he has lived that has brought him to this point. Fortunately for Cox the introductions are long as he needs time to start with his childhood and go through deaths, love, losses, betrayal, drugs, light entertainment, sex, more drugs, daddy issues and more drugs before he can perform with a clear head.
I rented this film without actually realising that it was basically a spoof on Walk the Line, which I fortunately had seen some months previously. Without knowing this or having seen that film, I would suggest that you are probably going to miss a lot of the gags since some of them are funny mainly because of their similarity to the "straight" film. It shouldn't be a massive problem though because it still does work as a comedy based on the rock biopic genre and as such is general enough to not require a great deal of knowledge. No, the bigger problem that most viewers are going to have with it is that it is just not as funny as it should be.
The length is part of the problem as it pushes the two-hour mark. Fine if the film has enough to make that work but this just doesn't. The plot is just a frame for the comedy, so that will not help engage; all that will really do it is to keep the viewer laughing as the film goes along. And there are laughs  some good ones and plenty that made me chuckle  but they are spread thin and are often the type that are amusing scenes rather than killer lines or sight gags. One is not better than the other but really this type of film needs both, the former keeping a firm bed of amusement to engage while the latter type delivers regular laugh-out-loud moments. Perhaps if it had been shorter then this wouldn't matter but this plus the running time leaves it baggy.
The cast try their best though and it was nice to see Reilly leading a film and doing a good job of it. The rest of the cast are second fiddle behind him but I did think that, laugh-wise, there were good turns from most of the main actors while cameos from Duffy, Ghostface and a few others added some laughs. That said though, Walk Hard is not a brilliant comedy so much as it is a reasonable one. It is rarely as funny or as inspired as it needs to be and the comparatively long running time makes this stand out all the more, leaving a film that is OK but never consistently more than that.