Review of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) by John R — 18 Jul 2011

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is the funniest spoof I have seen since Scary Movie in 2000. Hilarious spoofs and satires can be hard to pull off. In order for a spoof to be funny it has to be relevant and really effective in critiquing what it's spoofing. A satire with a bunch of current pop culture jokes just doesn't stand the test of time. Recent movies that are poor spoofs include Date Movie, Epic Movie, The Comebacks. Walk Hard stands in a league with other satires as it makes fun of music biopics, especially Walk the Line and Ray.

Walk Hard is about the fictional life of Dewey Cox (John C. Reily). The movie follows Dewey Cox's life as he changes the nation with his songs, goes on a rock 'n roll, sex, and drug spiral, meets famous musicians, goes to rehab, stars in his own 70's TV show, and eventually earns the love of a good woman--longtime backup singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer). John C. Reily transforms from second banana to a leading man as he proves he can carry a movie. He is hilarious as Dewey Cox and plays him so well that you start to believe that he really is Dewey Cox.

Besides Reily's performance another surprisingly funny performance came from Tim Meadows as one of Dewey Cox's bandmates. Another factor which makes the movie hillarious are the intentionally bad cameos. For instance Cox meets The Beatles (played by Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman), Elvis (Jack White from The White Stripes), and Buddy Holly (Frankie Muniz). Walk Hard is surprisingly brilliant and funny, but if you seen some music biopics then you'll enjoy it more. This is another excellent comedy from The Judd Apatow Production Company.