Walk Hard, 2/5

Rated R. Click to view the trailer.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, is Judd Apatow’s version of the Scary Movie series, and this parody of Walk the Line and Ray (and a few other bio pics). Is only slightly better than the Scary Movies.

Dewey Cox (the lovable-as-usual John. C. Reilly) stumbles through the lives of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, fathering dozens of children and dabbling in various illegal substances along the way. Reilly is pretty much the only thing that salvages the movie. Honestly, is there anything he hasn’t made better? (Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, A Prairie Home Companion, The Aviator, Boogie Nights, Chicago, The Perfect Storm, The Thin Red Line, etc). He marries Kristin Wiig’s Edith at 14 but ultimately leaves her for the sluttified Jenna Fisher. Personally, I prefer her slightly more demure if frumpy character from The Office. The four young gentlemen behind me in the theater apparently disagreed, vocally approving of her scantily clad-“ness” and decolletage so I guess that was the goal.

Surprisingly, the songs are pretty strong. Although the songs are chock full of double (and maybe even triple) entendres, they do sound like songs The Man in Black might have actually sung (Especially “Guilty as Charged”). Most of them (I liked “Let’s Duet”) are clever enough, so I’ll give them a pass.

The best part of the movie is spotting cameos: Is that Harold Ramis? Dude! It’s Frankie Muniz! Is he old enough to be in a rated-R movie? Jack White makes an awesome Elvis (although he was actually channeling Johnny Bravo more than the King)! How’d they get Eddie Vedder, Jewel, Ghostface Killah, Jackson Browne and Lyle Lovett? Come on, does Jonah Hill have to be in ALL Apatow’s movies? Is that really Justin Long? Who knew he, Paul Rudd , Jack Black and Jason Schwartzman made such a great Fab Four! They (especially Paul Rudd as John Lennon) were the highlight for me. I would kill for a Beatles documentary starring these four.

If you must see it, Walk Hard is better off as a DVD viewing, if only because the male frontal nudity would be much smaller and much less in your face. Only slightly better executed than the Scary Movie series and the like, it only reminds you how much better Ray and Walk the Line were. It would have been significantly better if the same cast got together made a straight-faced fictional biopic (but not parody).

Note to casting directors: I can handle a lot of SNL stars making the jump to movie. Kristen Wiig, Chris Parnell (both in this movie) are fine by me and then there's the gold standard of cross overs, Will Ferrell. However, Tim Meadows just can't hack it on the silver screen. Sorry Tim. Go back to Rockefeller Center. I'm sorry.