Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Walk Hard is a parody of the rock bio genre, and a very funny one. It takes specific things from certain other movies, and you’ll pick up on those immediately. The story arc’s familiar from those and a dozen (or a hundred) others. You get the encounters with the other rising stars (including a hilarious Elvis), the drugs, the fall(s) from grace, the comeback(s), the life on the road (groupies!). All the while, Dewey, who was in at the birth of rock and roll, moves through the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, adapting his style to the changing times. Some of the song parodies are dead on target, and I laughed at them as much as at the rest of the movie. The Conway Twitty-style duet (“Hello, Darlene”) carries the double entendre of Twitty’s songs to the logical extreme. Walk Hard won’t tax your brain, but it might tickle your funny bone. It did mine, but then I also laughed at Talladega Nights.

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