It’s been a very good year for Judd Apatow. He wrote and directed
Knocked Up, one of the year’s best films, comedy or otherwise, and
produced the hilariously vulgar Superbad. Both were smash hits, and
added to the former Freaks and Geeks writer-director’s fame. (He just
topped Entertainment Weekly’s list of The 50 Smartest People in
Hollywood.)
What a shame, then, that he ends 2007 on a flat note with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a surprisingly bland satire of those excessively earnest musician biopics such as Ray and Walk the Line.
On the surface Walk Hard has everything going for it - Apatow co-scripted the film with Jake Kasdan (who also directs), the talented John C. Reilly stars, and there are choice cameos by everyone from Apatow go-to guys Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, to Jack Black and the White Stripes’ Jack White. Even the movie poster, with Dewey Cox aping Jim Morrison, is chuckle-worthy.
I’ll admit that given the players involved I went in with high expectations for Walk Hard. But aside from a handful of genuinely funny moments and the odd flash of brilliance I found the whole exercise fairly bland, especially the last chapter, where the retired Cox makes a comeback on the strength of a modern-day duet with a rapper who samples his signature song.
Fischer and Reilly in a scene from Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Walk Hard pokes fun at The Beatles, Brian Wilson, and Bob Dylan, among others, but it’s mainly a riff on the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line. As Cox, Reilly channels the Man in Black as he comes up from humble beginnings, finds fame with his from-the-heart brand of country music, and then turns to drug use, putting his career and relationships in jeopardy. Of course everything’s played for laughs, from the childhood tragedy where he cuts his brother in half, literally, to his recurring breakdowns, which always seem to involve him ripping a sink from a wall. (The latter is a rare repeat joke that actually gets funnier the more times you see it over the course of the film.)
I really like John C. Reilly as an actor, but as Dewey Cox I just didn’t find him interesting. The problem is, because so much of the film rests on his shoulders, it’s easy to lose interest when he’s on screen. Ditto Jenna Fischer, who’s even less funny as the Reese Witherspoon-June Carter Cash love interest. As a consequence their love story provided some truly dull moments.
The music itself is one of the film’s saving graces – Walk Hard is actually a really good song (it’ll stick in your head). And the Apatow-written lyrics, to that and the film’s other songs including Take My Hand and (Mama) You Got To Love Your Negro Man, are very funny. So are the other little touches, for example the cheeky spoofs of album covers.
Another highlight for me was a scene where Dewey Cox hangs out with The Beatles, and here the casting is divine – an uncredited Jack Black as Paul McCartney, Paul Rudd as John Lennon, Justin Long as George Harrison, and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr. It’s only about five minutes of the film, where The Fab Four, ostensibly searching for enlightenment in their Ravi Shankar phase, end up bickering with each other, but it’s very funny. Jack White’s appearance as Elvis Presley was funny as well, but brief. Essentially if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve seen it.
It’s as though more time was spent on the small touches, including a sequence when Cox takes LSD and enters a Yellow Submarine-animated world, rather than the movie as a whole. And as a consequence the whole thing feels like one of those Will Ferrell satires, like Talladega Nights or Anchorman, (where comedic promise is unfulfilled or where comedic promise is replaced with mediocrity interspersed with rare hilarious gems) falling somewhere in between the two for laughs (Anchorman being the funniest).
I’m convinced Apatow is a genius, and his films The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up successfully ‘walk the line’ between juvenile humour and genuine emotion. Let’s hope he returns to the success of that new comedic genre he’s created and leaves the satire to those who do it better.
Posted by Cate Jones
Agree? Disagree? Email Cate at criticizecate@gmail.com
Walk Hard:
The Dewey Cox Story (** out of 5)
Rated: R
Starring: John C. Reilly, Jenna Fischer
Directed by: Jake Kasdan
Written by: Jake Kasdan, Judd Apatow
Related links: IMDB page, Official site
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