It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, and It’s Funny

As sure as winter storm clouds gather to dump slush on those of us living in ungentle climes, latter-day rags-to-riches-to-recidivism-to-redemption pop music biopics continue to cloud movie screens year after year. According to the old joke, everyone complains about the weather but nobody does anything to change it. In “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” the writer-director Jake Kasdan and co-writer-producer movie comedy savior Judd Apatow, along with estimable actor John C. Reilly, attempt to shine a satirical light through the joyless, dumbed-down, formulaic fog that Hollywood has lately used to shroud the complex lives and manifold artistic merits of such icons as Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, and Johnny Cash.“Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays,” Cox’s longtime drummer (Tim Meadows, one of about a dozen “Saturday Night Live” vets present in the film) warns a lackey backstage at a late-career tribute to the singer. The camera moves in, the years peel back, and we’re reintroduced to young Dewey (Connor Rayburn), the second son of hardworking, tough-loving, rural parents. “I’m cut in half pretty bad,” observes Dewey’s older brother Nate (Chip Hormess) after a playful machete fight unaccountably gets out of hand. Nate leaves Dewey with a burden of guilt for accidentally killing him, the unrelenting scorn of Pa Cox (Raymond J. Barry), who henceforth takes every opportunity to remind his remaining son that “the wrong kid died,” and a daunting promise to make good and find success enough for both brothers.Mr. Reilly soon appears as a suspiciously middle-aged 14-year-old Dewey in the mid-1950s. As he demonstrated in “Chicago” and Robert Altman’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” the actor’s characteristic adenoidal gargle (if, God help us, Fox ever foists a live-action “Simpsons” movie on the world, Mr. Reilly is a lock for Springfield’s town drunk Barney Gumble) hides a rich tenor singing voice. Early on, a lightweight puppy-love ballad, “Take My Hand,” performed by Mr. Reilly with a vocal lilt that evokes Roy Orbison, earns Dewey condemnation from adults and craven worship from his female peers, notably Edith (Kristen Wiig), whom he marries.“I believe in you,” Edith gently explains to Dewey when burgeoning show business ambitions inevitably collide with marital responsibilities. “I just know you’re going to fail.” Dewey’s comely new backup singer Darlene (Jenna Fischer) has faith to spare, however, and after love blossoms into adultery, Dewey and Darlene become soul mates regularly wrested asunder by Dewey’s periodic plunges into the decade-defining evils and excesses that a biopic-length career all but guaranteed. Mr. Apatow’s previous films, “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “Knocked Up,” and especially the Apatow-produced “Superbad,” revolve around characters of often disturbingly vivid humanity. No matter how broad the comedy, the people in these pictures behave like people. Though Mr. Reilly, Ms. Fischer, and company labor to plump “Walk Hard” up to the level of verisimilitude achieved in previous Apatow outings, the film’s script adheres to music biopic formula all too well, episodically stumbling along in the well-worn footprints left by the uniform and empty storytelling it emulates. While the filmmakers have assembled a lengthy checklist of clichés, the skewering here is a blunt, lazy, and toneless pastiche of facile pop culture pop-ups that evoke “Forrest Gump” more than “Walk the Line.”White Stripes guitarist Jack White plays the ’50s Elvis Presley as a caricature of the King’s ’70s karate-obsessed Memphis Mafia persona. Do the filmmakers care so much about bad movies and so little about the actual era they’re evoking that they don’t know the difference? Mr. White certainly does. Similarly, a scene portraying a meditation retreat alongside the Beatles achieves little more than facetious “Epic Movie”-style name-check non-comedy, despite the presence of Jack Black as Paul McCartney, Paul Rudd as John Lennon, and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr. Mr. Kasdan’s tepidly timed, close-up laden, TV-friendly direction adds little.The apotheosis of the movie genre satire is Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein,” a film of such loving craftsmanship that it succeeds both as a lampoon and a sterling example of that which it mocks. On the “Young Frankenstein” scale of affection and wit, “Walk Hard” the film pales in comparison to “Walk Hard” the soundtrack, a considerably more endearing retro evocation featuring clever and catchy songwriting from the Candy Butchers’ Dan Bern and Mike Viola. The film’s theme, written by Marshall Crenshaw (himself a bad music biography veteran thanks to his energetic but curiously cast cameo as Buddy Holly in 1987’s “La Bamba”), is a particularly inspired creation.Except for the music, what little heart the film itself has vanishes early on, replaced by a weak cocktail of short-haul gross-out gags, repetitive and obvious “inside” jokes, and unconvincing nostalgia — all pitched at a pre-teen level. Even the songs are eventually mauled to death courtesy of an embarrassing union of Jackson Browne, Jewel, Lyle Lovett, and Ghostface Killah. Mostly flaccid, facile, and unfunny, “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” storms the gate of Hollywood’s most creatively bankrupt genre only to stumble and defect to the other side.

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, and It’s Funny

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll, and It’s Funny

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