2007 biopic parodyRating: 15/20
Plot: Dewey Cox ponders his life and career and his choices both good and bad as he readies himself to accept some kind of lifetime achievement award. It's a life filled with fatally injuring siblings, infidelity, hit singles, meetings with prominent musicians, orgies, drugs, and seemingly every music fad to come in go in the years spanning his career.
I expected to only sort of like this, but it is by far the best thing Judd Apatow was associated with last year. It skims along like a Will Ferrell inflatable raft, but stays cream rather than crap because of very cool songs (including a protest song about midgets) and hilarious satiric touches. Laughed more at this than I have for a long time. Lots to see for the music fan as Cox's life trounces on highlights from the 50's, 60's, and 70's. I expected mostly a lampooning of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, but there are echoes of the Beatles and Dylan ("Royal Jelly," with lyrics penned by Dan Bern, is a musical highlight for me), Seeger-esque protest songs, Smile-era Brian Wilson nonsense ("This song needs 500 didgeridoos!"), Bowie's glam, disco, and so on. Walk Hard not only borrows sonically but visually from pop culture moments, and most of the movie is clever fun. Sure, with any comedy like this you're bound to have some really stupid moments, but more often than not, it delivered. I think a hatred of biopics probably helped me enjoy the irreverence even more.
Sitting hard:
3 comments:
nice shirt.
yr ratings have bean awfully high lately. awfully high.
yeah i haven't had the urge to see this yet cos i figured spinal tap and fear of a black hat covered the terrain. i guess i'll check it out.
Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum
Rim job fairy teapots mask the temper tantrum
O' say can you see 'em
Stuffed cabbage is the darling of the Laundromat
'N the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack
Pressing passing stinging half synthetic fabrication of his-- Time
The mouse with the overbite explained how the rabbits were ensnared
'N the skinny scanty sylph trashed the apothecary diplomat
Inside the three-eyed monkey within inches of his toaster oven life
In my mind
I'm half blind
My inner ref
Is mostly deaf
I'm smell impaired
If you cared
My sense of taste is wasted on the phosphorescent orange peels of San Francisco axe-encrusted frenzy
So let me touch you
Let me touch you
Let me touch you
Let me touch you
Where the Ro-yal Jelly gets made
Coleratura singers bringing weeds and social clingers
Hangers-on and fancy flingers
To the dress ball
Mushrooms and bowling pins
Stove pipe hats and other things I can't recall
From Juvenile hall
We're so unlucky and stuff
Woodrow Wilson never had it so tough
Dairy Queen and Vaseline and Maybelline
Paul Bunyan and James Dean
Allegory agencies of pre-Raphaelite paganry
And Shenandoah tapestries
Compared with good mahogany
Collapsing the undying postcard romance
With feline perspicacity
By the university
That night I held a paucity
Which you deemed common courtesy
I wasn't what you thought I'd be
I shouldn't have invited you to dance
In my tree
I'm halfway free
And in my chair
One quarter there
In my dream
One-sixteenth cream
In the coffee of the Courtier
Of the sycophant assistant to the king
So let me touch you
Let me touch you
Let me touch you
Let me touch you
Where the Ro----yal Jelly gets made
Love those lyrics! Written by Dan Bern, who is a cool Dylan-esque folk-rocker guy. I was listening to Dan Bern's solo album on the way to my grandmother's funeral many many years ago, and the funeral home guy who parked my car for me came in and found me just so he could find out what was playing. Ballsy. But maybe Dan Bern is that good...
I'm always surprised that this comedy isn't more highly regarded.
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