Be it movies, TV or music, if you don't like something that's on, you can always change the channel. But movies are an investment unlike music, where as three minutes of your time is far easier to afford to something new. Perhaps that's why Weird Al works so well parodying music, and not movies.
Well I suppose he did have his own show decades ago, but that is not what he's famous for.
"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story," coming to us free by The Roku Channel, is not the legit biopic its title or marketing suggests, instead being a parody of the genre. It's a good idea, proven to work from the the popular "Funny or Die" skit it's based on, but just because it works in a short lasting a few minutes doesn't mean it'll sustain a feature-length production.
The story chronicles the almost entirely fictional story of the rise and fall of Mr. Yankovic, with torrid sex, drugs, alcohol, and murder all played for laughs. But I never laughed, hell I barely cracked a smile most of the time; in fact the best moments here were when Daniel Radcliffe, playing Weird Al, performs his most famous songs. But I'm not going to laugh at a song that I've heard dozens of times that's decades old. It's like a "greatest hits" record spliced into an unrelated movie.
Parody movies are a tricky business because they're comedies, and comedy is hard. For every terrific "The Naked Gun" and "Austin Powers" we have duds like "Spy Hard" and, yes, even Al's own "UHF" from the 80's. There's a special magic that only the best parody films possess, but I would have been happy with an "OK" one. We have here a parody that isn't funny, and in the world of cinema, few things are more uncomfortable to sit through than an unfunny comedy.
I can't fault the cast, with Radcliff giving a dedicated performance, but I can fault director Eric Appel and Al himself, the two of which wrote the script. Moments linger along with nothing happening, scenes that make sense in serious films where we're invested in the characters and whatever they're thinking. Here, we're left thinking "where's the punchline?"
But there's one reason why "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" fails as hard as it does: the dialogue just isn't sharp. Clever wordplay and puns Al injects into his songs are nowhere to be found. I say "found" and not "heard," because the musician often puts so many sight gags in his music videos that they become almost as fun to watch as they are to listen to. This is better not watched or listened to.
We get ridiculous situations like Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) getting kidnapped by Pablo Escobar (Arturo Castro) so that Al will come to his birthday party. Sure, sounds silly enough, as does the sudden gunplay where henchmen are disposed ala John Wick. But so what? A ludicrous circumstance isn't inherently humorous, you need to play it straight, you need to push it over the edge of just being a scene in a movie with actors playing characters. A glib comment, unexpected slapstick, anything!
I've been a fan of Weird Al since I first heard his music, so I take no pleasure in reporting I experienced no pleasure watching this. 108 minutes is far too long for what is essentially a single joke, so once you hear the joke, all that's left are variations on the same thing. "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" is a hard film to review because it's a hard film to enjoy or even understand. The best way to describe it is "weird," which if that's what they were going for, good for them. Its heart is in the right place, but that doesn't mean it wasn't an enormous waste of talent and resources.
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