Review: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

The mostly untrue story of music parody specialist Weird Al Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe), his rise to fame, his struggles to gain the approval of his father (Toby Huss), and his supposedly torrid love affair with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood).

 

I think my fandom of comedian and musical parodist Weird Al Yankovic is probably reflective of some of you out there: I was a big fan until I stopped recognising the music he was parodying. For me that was around the time of the Running With Scissors album where I really only recognised three of the parodies and didn’t much like any of them. For you, it might’ve been an earlier or later album. I still listen to the earlier albums regularly and I think Al seems like a heck of a nice guy, but I stopped listening to new music (outside of some legacy artists) by and large around 1999 so his parodies were often a bit lost on me by that point. I was excited when I heard that someone was doing a biopic on Al, and although I naturally assumed there’d be plenty of humour I was mostly interested in learning about the man and his career.

 

This 2022 film from director Eric Appel (a veteran TV comedy director) and co-writer Yankovic is not that film. It was never intended to be that film, I get that. True to the Yankovic spirit it uses the figure of Yankovic to create a parody of the biopic genre. Unfortunately, “Walk Hard” already gave us that, and this boring, stupid film just doesn’t come close to competing let alone being a worthy tribute to Yankovic. It’s not that it isn’t the film I expected or wanted, it’s that it’s not even a good attempt at what it’s striving for.

 

So I think making a full-blown spoof was a bad idea. It limits things, whereas this could’ve been funny, dramatic, and informative all at once. Instead it’s 90 minutes of ‘Haha, we’re making the notoriously clean cut guy seem like a hellraiser, chortle, chortle’. I get that Yankovic is a pretty private guy, but that’s why you don’t make the movie in the first place, Al. I was bitterly disappointed with this one and I’m actually surprised to be on a lonely island on my own. Most people loved this film. Seeing the words “A Funny or Die” production should let you know the one-joke product you’re in for here. And if it were a “Funny or Die” short/trailer it would’ve been fine. indeed Appel did direct a fake trailer with the exact same title in 2010 but starring Aaron Paul as Al and Olivia Wilde as Madonna. At feature length, though? Deadly.

 

I get it. I get why this was meant to be funny. I just wasn’t laughing, it’s too ham-fisted and corny and I say that as a guy who enjoyed “UHF” back in the day and knows that this is the guy who wrote “My Bologna”. I’m not expecting Dickensian wit. It’s the execution more than the premise that failed for me here. I guess it’s cute having Toby Huss play Al’s disapproving dad as overly violent about Al’s musical parody dreams, but cute isn’t funny. Ditto the cute bit where Al comes up with “My Bologna” in the exact way you expect, and Michael Jackson parodying Al’s “Eat it” with “Beat It”. Funny? No. Cute? Sure. The first snort – still not a laugh – comes from Al himself in a cameo as a record exec.

It’s not entirely without merit: Rainn Wilson was born to play Al’s mentor Dr. Demento (Patton Oswalt played him in the fake trailer apparently), and Jack Black is the only genuinely funny thing here as Wolfman Jack. I almost wanted to watch a Wolfman Jack biopic instead. However, as much as the idea of Al and Madonna being romantically involved is funny, it does not play out funny because neither Daniel Radcliffe or Evan Rachel Wood are funny people. Daniel Radcliffe never convinces as Al, and while that’s the exact joke, it’s not a remotely funny one. Even less convincing are the people playing Pee Wee Herman, Tiny Tim, and for some reason Alice Cooper. I wouldn’t mind if they were at least funny but they’re not. In the end, the funniest material here is in the song parodies themselves that we hear snippets of. Thankfully they’re the original recordings with Al’s own voice.

 

Al’s a great guy and was a huge part of my childhood and teen years, but this is a 10 minute skit stretched mightily thin to feature length. Pretty boring, pretty useless. I’m gonna go and listen to “Off the Deep End” for the fiftieth time and smile, if no longer busting a gut perhaps.  

 

Rating: D+