Is it possible to not like Weird Al Yankovic? I mean, I can get not getting into his brand of comedy, but he seems fairly likable. He’s also a guy who, well, seems to have no real skeletons in his closet. While I am sure he isn’t always “on” and all, he has been essentially the same family-friendly comedian who rewrites popular songs, usually to the delight of the original performers for decades.
So, naturally, he made a biopic that tells his very dark life story, free to view on the Roku Channel. He even introduces the movie, based as it is on a Funny or Die fake trailer he made at one point. Will this feature length film be as amusing as the original fake trailer?
After a moment where Weird Al (Daniel Radcliffe) gets wheeled into an emergency room after a bad car accident, the movie flashes back to his childhood. Young Al adored the work of Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson) and wanted nothing more than to write parody songs. His mother (Julianne Nicholson) doesn’t want to encourage her son into following his dreams as he is a huge disappointment to his father (Toby Huss), an angry man who lost his hand at his job at the factory. What kind of factory? Never mind that! Al’s father finds rewriting song lyrics to be wrong. And after sneaking out to go to a polka party, well, there’s no turning back for Al.
After attempts to join a band fail because it turns out most bands don’t want an accordion player, Al tries his hand at song parody, and though the Scotti Brothers of Scotti Brothers Records (Yankovic and Will Forte) tell him there’s no market for parody when you can get the original song for the same price, he does gain the eye of his idol Demento and rocks to the top of the charts. Al, musical genius that he is, even goes on to create original songs that later may be mistaken for parody. But when Al meets and starts dating Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), and she seems to be something of a bad influence, getting Al into drinking and that sort of thing, things take a dark turn.
I’m gonna basically stop here. This is obviously not the real life of Weird Al, and Al’s own insistence aside, this is basically Weird Al’s idea of a musical biopic where the artist has a rocky life where he’s estranged from at least one parent, he’s hooked on drugs and/or alcohol, and he’s a musical genius that made the entire world a better place with his music, adored by all as he sat at the top of the charts while having a bad romantic relationship. And I’ll just add here that Yankovic has always gotten permission before parodying, well, anybody, so Madonna must be a hell of a good sport if she signed off on this one.
But is that enough for a feature length work? Well, maybe. It’s not the funniest take on the musical biopic (that’s still Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), but it’s amusing enough. Radcliffe is a great “dark Weird Al,” and the rest of the cast, including a number of familiar comedic actors in various minor roles, is clearly having a lot of fun with plenty of references to Weird Al’s best known tunes. I wouldn’t call this an all-time great comedy, but for a fun evening on a Friday night after a long week at work? It’s great for that, and I think it’s great that Weird Al once again just whipped up something for his fans, even if the joke that the Al in the movie is nothing like the real life guy got a little old at times. It was still fun. And it was weird. It was very weird.
Grade: B+
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