Has anybody seen Dewey Cox?
Dewey Cox will be a household name by New Year’s Eve and a rockin’ costume for next Halloween.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story will ensure that posterity the way Austin Powers’ movies forever changed the way we look at secret agents on screen. Jake Kasdan’s movie parodies everything about another movie genre doing the same old thing too long, rubbing in dirt the noses of anyone still falling for the clichés.
The genre in question is the music legend biopic, recently celebrated for repetitiveness in Walk the Line and Ray. If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow call that a dirty shame, creating a shamefully dirty spoof of every movie making the rise and fall of a superstar look the same.
Walk Hard doesn’t always hit the right notes but plucks enough to guarantee repeat viewings to memorize the catchphrases. When it’s good, the movie is kind of fun. When it’s being bad, it’s hilarious and not for the faint-hearted. Each chapter of this absurdly fictional life is gonzo.
Reilly plays everything like an actor possessed. His Golden Globe nomination for best musical/comedy actor isn’t a fluke. When Dewey enters his Bob Dylan stage, singing an incomprehensible protest song like an orator on acid, a better title for the movie comes to mind: I’m Not All There.
Walk Hard opens Friday. Read the full review Thursday in Weekend.
Steve Persall is the movie critic for the St. Petersburg Times. He was conceived behind a drive-in movie theater his father operated and raised in projection booths and concession stands. He doesn't care how you did it up north.
Steve,
Would you put this up there with Spinal Tap? Is it something like Spinal Tap meets the Ghost of Gram Parsons? Has Judd Apatow become the premier comedy writer of the last few years, or is it a case where there has been nothing but crap comedies being released? I am full of questions because I just don't find today's comedies living up the ones released in the 70's and 80's. Am I old, or just a frustrated former PEL student?
Posted by: Kennedy | December 18, 2007 at 07:29 PM
Now, now, there are no frustrated PEL students, just ones that didn't take my class. No, Dewey Cox isn't an "11" like Spinal Tap. But it's a pretty hard 8. I'm not as sold on Apatow's comic genius as many writers are (although 40-Year-Old Virgin is funny stuff).
Posted by: Steves | December 20, 2007 at 09:50 AM
I really enjoyed Walk Hard. It had some great lines. "I can't build you a house made of candy! It'll fall down!!" Tim Meadows also almost stole the movie for me, which is very strange indeed.
Posted by: Ryan Treacy | December 26, 2007 at 06:21 PM