Review of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) by David P — 24 Jun 2010

Y'know, it had completely slipped my mind that I'd seen this about a month or so ago, which speaks volumes about how disposable I considered it to be. It's not a terrible film but I do believe that it pales in comparison with more focused music parodies like "Spinal Tap" and "CB4".

At the beginning of "Walk Hard" we meet earnest but clueless Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) who's growing up in a small Alabama town. His Normal Rockwell childhood is marred by tragedy when a negligent (and not to mention gratuitous) machete accident (?) claims the life of his plucky younger brother, inspiring his father to begin a life-long mantra that "the wrong kid died".

Dewey manages to parlay this experience into an epiphany when a chance meeting with a blues guitarist reveals that he's a musical prodigy. Promising to be "double great for the both of us" in memory of his dead brother, Dewey soon wins a local talent show, finds himself married to his remarkably fertile twelve year old girlfriend and finds instant fame in a fateful recording session.

What follows is a veritable check list of rock music cliches: marital strife courtesy of an alluring backup singer, comically escalating scenes of gateway drug abuse, sexual hedonism, hotel room demolitions, spiritual trips to India, creative differences amongst the band, being forced to slum in an embarrassing Seventies-style music variety show and an inevitable return to glory.

Although funny in spurts, my main gripe with the film is that it fails to focus on one particular genre or artist that's ripe for parody. As a result the humor seems desperate and scatter-shot at times to the point that it begins to resemble the music mockumentary equivalent of "Meet the Spartans".

It's almost as if writers Judd Apatow and Jake Kasdan initially were inspired to sharpen their knives only for the 2005 Johnny Cash biopic "Walk The Line" but had an "oh, crap" moment when they realized they didn't have enough material to work with since that movie was so damned good.

That's when a "kitchen sink" mentality creeps in and we're bombarded with inside jokes about musical icons as disparate as Ray Charles, Brian Wilson and Jim Morrison (hey, just look at the poster above!) Apatow and director Kasdan are obviously huge music nerds and their references are visually authentic (like the trippy "Yellow Submarine" sequence) and pointed (Dewey has a career resurgence with young people only when "Walk Hard" is sampled by flash- in- the- pan- rapper "L'il Nutzzak").

As a fellow music nut, it's kinda fun to try and catalog all the references and spot the cameos (Jack White shines in his brief appearance as an incoherent and karate-obsessed Elvis) but this enterprise is often more distracting than funny.

Mercifully my gripes are countered somewhat by the efforts of the tremendous cast. The always-stellar John C. Reilly gets a well-deserved lead role and proves he's much more than second banana material for Will Ferrell.

Super-cute Jenna Fischer has fun with her June Cash/inadvertent home-wrecker role. Speaking of, Kristen Wiig as Dewey's closed-minded and prolific wife Edith is also a real treat. SNL alums Tim Meadows and Chris Parnell also bring the funny as Dewey's long-suffering band-mates.

So, all told, "Walk Hard" tries hard to impress and succeeds more than it fails. I just wish it had been a bit more committal to it's primary inspiration. Tilt: down.