REVIEW
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 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
2008
Certificate: 15 | Runtime: 96 | Director: Jake Kasdan
Starring: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Raymond J. Barry
 
Singer Dewey Cox (Reilly) has lived the rock and roll life. After his brother dies in a gruesome machete accident in his youth, Dewey embarks upon a road to musical discovery, and extravagance. A life of music, parties, women, drugs and every possible luxury is all well and good, but Dewey has yet to find the real love of a decent woman. However, in backup singer Darlene Madison (Fischer) may have found just that, and the two of them become, not only a romantic item, but a singing sensation together. But will Dewey's new life last?
What an unusual film Walk Hard is. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because the film overall is an enjoyable one. But it has been quite a while since a spoof of this nature has concentrated almost the entirety of its efforts on lampooning one particular film. The end result is less a parody of lots of different films, and more what would have happened had Judd Apatow (and Jake Kasdan) written Walk the Line.
John C. Reilly seems to like comedies of late, and he's good at them too. One of the most talented and interesting dramatic character actors working today, Reilly seems to understand that good acting can be just as important to comedies as comic timing. He doesn't have the effortless comic style or strange charisma of, say, Will Ferrell; someone who I could also have imagined playing Dewey. But he is clearly adept at fleshing out rather crude characters into more rounded individuals, and has a good ear for jokes. And importantly for this film, he can also sing.
For her part, Fischer is just a great big bundle of sexy, funny cuteness. She's terrific as well, and her chemistry with Reilly, both comic and otherwise, is really rather good. Unfortunately, she tends to rather pop in and out of the film; largely as a result of Dewey's frantic and topsy-turvy lifestyle. Elsewhere, Tim Meadows and Chris Parnell stand out as members of Dewey's band, while pretty much the entire current crop of cinematic comedians (Jack Black, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, to name but a few), have cameos of varying degrees of success. Clearly then, Walk Hard does not have a cast lacking comic talent.
And that factor generally shows through. The film is regularly funny, and often hilarious. But one of the problems it has is that it hits that inevitable moment when it tries to be a little deeper; when Dewey really starts to experience problems in his life. It's not that these segments cannot be absorbing in their own way, but when a film has spent about 45 minutes just having fun, it can be difficult to inject even a modicum of seriousness into the proceedings. I also think that the film's degree of reliance on Walk the Line limits what it can do to an extent. Naturally, not every joke in Walk Hard relates to the James Mangold film, but a large number of them do. From the brother getting cut in half by a machete, to Dewey's habit of pulling sinks off the wall when he's depressed; these things all relate back to Walk the Line. Even Dewey's life cycle - including his jerk of a father (Barry), links back to the Oscar-winning biopic. Not only do I suspect some of these jokes will fall flat at the feet of people who haven't seen Walk the Line, it does mean that sometimes, and I almost feel bad saying this, Walk Hard veers ever so slightly towards one of those crappy Seltzer and Friedberg films (Date Movie etc). Certain scenes seem like precise copies from Walk the Line, but with some jokes put in.
None the less, there's enough here to warrant a solid recommendation. The writing isn't as strong in as some of the better spoof biopics of the last few years (such as Anchorman), but for consistently solid laughs, Walk Hard certainly delivers.© David Mercier
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