Movie Review: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

By Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune Movie Critic

2-1/2 stars

In "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," the song parodies contributed by Marshall Crenshaw and others take aim at Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and other musical legends just asking for it. The tunes are so good, you can't believe the film itself doesn't amount to more, especially with the rightness of the casting. Still, a few laughs are better than none. And you have to admire the doggedness of the director and co-writer, Jake Kasdan, for sticking to his running-gag guns and showing us some anonymous actor's genitals in close-up, twice, for comic reasons Kasdan and co-writer Judd Apatow will likely explain in the DVD commentary.

John C. Reilly plays Dewey Cox, fictional down-home demon-plagued icon, struggling with a horrible childhood tragedy resulting in the loss of his saintly brother ("the wrong kid died," Dad keeps saying over and over, through the years, per "Walk the Line"). Drinking, pills, cocaine, infidelity and a series of very swank toupees afflict Dewey as his star rises, then falls, then rises. His signature tune, "Walk Hard," puts forth a credo just vague enough to apply to everyone: "Walk hard down life's rocky road."

Reilly is consistently engaging, even when the material sputters. He sang on screen, very nicely, in "Chicago," and in some of the mock-ballads and country wailers here he sounds like Roy Orbison. More to the point for this raunchy satire, he knows how to play things straight so the gags, good, bad and indifferent, aren't hopelessly telegraphed. In "Let's Duet," a sweetly dippy puppy-love ditty larded with double entendres, Reilly makes goo-goo eyes at his smoldering God-fearing bundle-of-contradictions backup singer, Darlene, played by Jenna Fischer of "The Office." She's very funny. Kristen Wiig, stuck in a role two sizes too small for her, plays Dewey's perpetual pregnancy machine of a wife, a staple of musical biopics.

The genre is asking for it every which way, really. While "Walk Hard" makes for a fine soundtrack, it's less entertaining as a movie. Kasdan and Apatow hew very closely - too closely - to "Walk the Line," throwing in bits of "Ray" here and there, but Kasdan doesn't know how to film such scenes as the accidental mutilation of Dewey's brother ("Dewey! I'm halved!") without stressing, clumsily, the gross-out nature of things. Point of comparison: In "Blades of Glory," when we're shown an accidental beheading during a skating routine it's hilarious and unexpected. Here the slapstick is all pain, no gain.

While the intentions of "Walk Hard" are nothing like those of "Superbad" or "Knocked Up," two previous and very worthy Apatow successes, you feel let down nonetheless. Those comedies skewed much younger in their demographics, yet managed to be gratifyingly rich and strange in their humor - fresher, certainly, than everything in between the numbers here. Still, the lyrics of the Dylan parody "Royal Jelly" are pricelessly indecipherable. And the way Reilly sings them, you wonder if Todd Haynes shouldn't have made room for a seventh version of Dylan in "I'm Not There."

"Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story"

Directed by Jake Kasdan; screenplay by Kasdan and Judd Apatow ; photographed by Uta Briesewitz; edited by Tara Timpone and Steve Welch; music by Michael Andrews; songs by Mike Viola, Dan Bern, Charlie Wadhams and Marshall Crenshaw; production design by Jefferson D. Sage; produced by Apatow, Kasdan and Clayton Townsend. A Columbia Pictures release. Running time: 1:36. MPAA rating: R (for sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language).

Dewey - John C. Reilly

Darlene - Jenna Fischer

Edith - Kristen Wiig

Sam - Tim Meadows