Walk Hard (2007)

Written by Judd Apatow & Jake Kasdan
Directed by Jake Kasdan

The thing that the Wayans Brothers (Scary Movie 1 & 2) and the Zucker Brothers (Airplane!, Scary Movie 3 & 4, Top Secret!, The Naked Gun) movies have been missing the past 10 years or so, a real heart, actual comedy (which means jokes instead of simple mirrored parody) and a storyline that is itself a parody of the movies it is making fun of.

The opening of this film parodies Ray, and Walk the Line, which is basically the basis for the entire film. He has a tragedy where his brother dies (or gets killed with a machete, whichever way you look at it) and that inspires his music career. To add to his motivation, his father blames Dewey (John C. Reilly) for his brother's death (even though it was his fault after all) and keeps saying "the wrong son died". So Dewey lives out an amalgamation of the lives of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, in the style of Forrest Gump, where he interacts with all the major musical movements over the years.

Throughout his exploits, Dewey becomes addicted to basically every drug on the planet, causes the Beatles to get into a fight, accidently creates punk rock during a cocaine fueled band practice, marries twice, has a ton of kids, finds his June Carter named Darlene (Jenna Fischer), gets locked up multiple times, and reinvents himself musically multiple times with the coming of each decade.

The comedy lies in the parodies of each musical generation, along with the actually well written songs, that are as equally well performed by John C. Reilly himself. That's the real treat in this film, not only is it funny, retaining that Apatow brand of humor, but it's an extremely well made film.

The cast here is the real delight, and although I'm not sure how many more movies this crew can string together without me getting tired of it, I was really impressed by the amount of people they got to be a part of this film, most of them with NBC ties (Tim Meadows, Jenna Fischer, Chris Parnell [from SNL], Nat Faxon [from My Name is Earl and Joey], Craig Robinson [the Office], Ed Helms [the Office] and Jack McBrayer [30 Rock]), the Apatow gang (Jonah Hill, Martin Starr, Paul Rudd, and Paul Feig), actor friends (like Jack Black, Jason Schwartzman and Frankie Muniz), and plain old celebrity cameos (Ghostface Killa, Jack White [as Elvis], Lyle Lovett, the Temptations, Jewel, Eddie Vedder, and Jackson Browne). So at literally every turn half of the fun is pointing people out to yourself, and that alone produces a lot of laughs.

It was a well done parody because it was such a well made movie, in conjunction with the fact that it felt like a real film, which is why it will be hard to sell as a straight parody, although that is exactly what it is. Everything about it is really well done, even down to the fact that it is portrayed as a straight movie, thus lacking the "wink wink" feeling of so many other parodies such as the Wayans and the Zucker Brothers movies so often have. It's not a magnificent film, but it's really funny, it has a heart and gross out humor that Apatow is famous for, but at the same time it feels like a serious film, with the real credibility being directly traced back to Reilly. Not the funniest movie of the year, but it's definitely worth checking out if you want a good laugh. My favorite scene of the whole movie is with the Beatles, where Paul Rudd's imitation of John Lennon had me cracking up, only to be shown up by the fight that breaks out with Paul (Jack Black) followed by the scene where they convince Dewey to do LSD for the first time. "Scientists made it you know." - Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr.
 
8.6/10