Behind the Music, This Time for Laughs
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: December 21, 2007
“Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” has a good beat and you can dance to it, though mostly you’ll probably just tap your foot. It’s a cleverly packaged story about a patently phony musician — er, John C. Reilly is Dewey Cox — who conquers the nation’s eardrums with a song in his heart, a guitar in his hands and a million clichés in his DNA. He’s a tuneful pastiche: a little bit country, a little bit rock ’n’ roll, topped off with a pinch of Ray Charles, a dash of Buddy Holly and a whole mess of Johnny Cash as filtered through Joaquin Phoenix’s impersonation and mischievously repurposed through the Judd Apatow laugh factory.
Mr. Apatow wrote the screenplay with the director Jake Kasdan, though given how close the two follow the recent biopic template some credit rightly belongs to the writers of “Ray” and “Walk the Line.” Like those films, “Walk Hard” tells an upbeat story about a great talent who finds renown, but also stumbles into temptation. “Ray” and “Walk the Line” are soft targets, near-parodies of the form, which suits this film just fine since Mr. Apatow and Mr. Kasdan have no plans to burn down the house. Dewey doesn’t shoot up backstage or beat his woman, much less drown in his vomit or hang himself in the family kitchen, as Ian Curtis does in “Control,” the downbeat version of the same old rock ’n’ roll story.
Born to be mild, Dewey is cuddly and cute, not Iggy or pop. Partly as a consequence, the film is more funny ha-ha than LOL; it’s a smarty-pants satire that mocks and embraces almost every cliché in the biography playbook. The usual characters enter on cue, hitting their marks and the expected emotional notes, including Ma Cox (the wonderful Margo Martindale) and Pa Cox (Raymond J. Barry), who rear Dewey in a shotgun shack not far from where Ray Charles played in the dirt before he grew up to become Jamie Foxx and win an Academy Award. Like Ray, Dewey is a musical prodigy, and it isn’t long before he’s making the girls swoon. But by then he’s become Buddy Holly with a child bride more befitting Jerry Lee Lewis.
Mr. Kasdan is an observant student, and “Walk Hard” glitters with recycled biopic verisimilitude, from the cars to the clothes to the nagging first wife (Kristen Wiig) and especially the music. Written by a team of collaborators, the close to 20 songs jump from early rock ’n’ roll (“Take my ha-ha-hand”) to the Johnny Cash-style anthem of the film’s title and a genius Dylan-esque rune delivered in twanging singsong, in which “mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum,” “fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum/O’ say can you see ’em,” “stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat,” and The mouse with the overbite explained how the rabbits were ensnared ’N the skinny scanty sylph trashed the apothecary diplomat Inside the three-eyed monkey within inches of his toaster-oven life.
Dewey’s “Don’t Look Back” period takes place in the black-and-white 1960s familiar from D. A. Pennebaker’s documentary and now, of course, the Todd Haynes-Cate Blanchett take on that same period in “I’m Not There.” Mr. Kasdan shifts visual styles, or at least color schemes, as often as Dewey changes outfits. But despite the kaleidoscopic twirling, time traveling and a giddy visit with the Beatles in India, “Walk Hard” is surprisingly flat. Part of the problem is that it sticks so close to the films that inspired it that it actually echoes some of their flaws. The June Carter-Reese Witherspoon story in “Walk the Line” was pretty much a drag; the sendup in “Walk Hard,” which features Jenna Fischer as Darlene, is so accurate that it is too.
The reliably enjoyable Mr. Reilly doesn’t bring any real modulation to Dewey or his phases, just good vibrations. He’s fun to hang around, even though I wish he and the film had made room for madness and not only faithful mimicry. Like all of Mr. Apatow’s films, “Walk Hard” is naughty, but it’s also awfully nice, a word that has no place in rock ’n’ roll. Maybe that’s why I kept waiting (hoping) for the Dewey Cox promised in the film’s poster, which shows Mr. Reilly — in homage to Jim Morrison — wearing only a necklace and a goofy, what-me-worry gape. He still looks more like Alfred E. Neuman than the Lizard King, true, but there he also seems on the actual verge of letting it all hang out.
“Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
WALK HARD
The Dewey Cox Story
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Jake Kasdan; written by Judd Apatow and Mr. Kasdan; director of photography, Uta Briesewitz; edited by Tara Timpone and Steve Welch; music by Michael Andrews; production designer, Jefferson D. Sage; produced by Mr. Apatow, Mr. Kasdan and Clayton Townsend; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes.
WITH: John C. Reilly (Dewey Cox), Jenna Fischer (Darlene Madison Cox), Tim Meadows (Sam), Kristen Wiig (Edith Cox), Raymond J. Barry (Pa Cox), Harold Ramis (L’Chai’m), Margo Martindale (Ma Cox), Chris Parnell (Theo), Matt Besser (Dave) and David Krumholtz (Schwartzberg).
