Posted: 12/27/2007

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

(2007)

by Hank Yuloff

The best parodies occur when they can stand alone and you do not need to have seen the original to understand why it is funny. The best of all time is probably Airplane, which took off on all of the air disaster movies of the 1970’s. Soul Plane, the 2004 send up of the genre, did not. The Scream and Scary Movie flicks work, too. Snakes on a (motherfucking) Plane did not. Sometimes you just feel like the movie maker is trying a bit too hard. In Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, I think writer/director Jake Kasdan (Orange County) was working so hard on the script that sweat was pouring off the screen. He should have let co-writer Judd Apatow (Freaks and Geeks, 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights) take one more run at it.

Here is the plot outline from Sony Pictures: The up-and-down-and-up-again story of musician Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly from Talladega Nights), whose songs would change a nation. On his rock ‘n roll spiral, Cox sleeps with 411 women, marries three times, has 22 kids and 14 step kids, stars in his own ’70s TV show, collects friends ranging from Elvis to the Beatles to a chimp, and gets addicted to—and then kicks—every drug known to man… but despite it all, Cox grows into a national icon and eventually earns the love of a good woman—longtime backup singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer).

Why didn’t I write my own? Because I felt it would be a good parody of a review if the studio wrote their own. Isn’t that funny? You get my point. Dewey Cox (this thinly veiled reference to a sexual residue is revisited constantly) is, of course supposed to be Johnny Cash, the subject of last year’s Walk the Line. But if you did not know that Cash was the target of the parody—this film falls into a ring of fire, flaming up in a terrible crash and burn.

It is not totally without redeeming values. The music is generally quite good. There is a send up of Bob Dylan which is spot on, and Reilly’s duets with co-star Fischer (The Office) are fantastic—the sexual innuendo perfectly fitting the movie. A 5 minute segment where Cox goes to visit the Beatles in India is hilarious. Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman play John, Paul, George and Ringo in a hilarious send up. But Buddy Holly, Elvis and Big Bopper characterizations are truly weak. Also, the running joke that Orthodox Jews controlling the music industry is out of place—a fine performance by Harold Ramis not withstanding.

There were many moments I laughed so this was not a total waste of time. And honestly I think I must have missed some of the jokes because the audience I viewed this with laughed far more often than I did. Like every time a penis appeared within camera view in a hotel scene they went nuts for Dewey Cox. So to speak.

Hank Yuloff is a film reviewer living in Los Angeles.

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