Hard Walkin'

Rating: 8/10 (13 April 2008)

As a fan of the parody movie genre, who has seen it dwindle down from the greats like Naked Gun and Spaceballs to total horse crap like Epic Movie, it's great to see movies like Walk Hard. But that's just it - you HAVE to realize that Walk Hard is a parody. You could even go so far as to say it's our generation's "This Is Spinal Tap" in that a lot of people who originally saw it didn't get the joke at first.
It's not just of the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk The Line", which it does parody heavily, but every biopic ever made. And not only does it follow the formula to a T, even right down to the part where the musician enters rehab and sobers up, but portraying the fictional Dewey Cox instead of a real-life musician is not an easy task. Especially when the Apatow gang really does convince you that Dewey Cox exists.
The Cox saga starts off when Dewey accidentally decapitates his brother with a machete. He then overcomes his tragedy by discovering the blues. Then we cut to ten years later when we see a fully-grown Cox as a 14 year old playing in a high school band. From there, Dewey gets married, goes out on tour, leaves his wife for his backup singer Darlene, then goes to India to hang out with a really convincing version of the Beatles and gets involved with every pill and drug known to man, thanks to his drummer (Tim Meadows). But Meadows practically steals the show in that his character introduces Dewey to all the drugs.
Overall, this is a great parody, and the Apatow gang pulled it off nearly flawlessly. John C. Reilly is an insanely funny actor, and the movie contains a killer soundtrack, which is more than worth seeking out, with all the tunes being performed by Reilly himself. It's too bad that other Apatow movies, like "Superbad" and the forthcoming "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" stole the thunder from Dewey Cox, but it's worth checking out now that it is on DVD.