If this feels like a feature length Funny or Die spoof, it’s because that’s exactly what it is. If you’re wondering if a Funny or Die sketch can become a viable motion picture, the answer is yes. Mostly.
Whereas Weird Al took regular songs and made them funny, the movie is essentially a comedy, but it plays things totally seriously. You know, as if it was your average, run of the mill biopic of a famous musician. This is a kind of tightrope act. It’s something that would be easy to sustain for a five-minute short. It’s another feat entirely to maintain the tone when you have to commit to the bit for nearly two hours. And it succeeds. Mostly.
Al (Daniel Radcliffe) wants to play polka, but his stern father (Toby Huss) forbids him in hopes he’ll someday work in the factory like his old man. When Al gets recognition playing parody songs, he becomes an overnight success. However, when his girlfriend Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) gets kidnapped by drug czar Pablo Escobar, Al must go into the jungle to rescue her.
The deadpan seriousness of some scenes is amusing, especially when it’s sending up the conventional biopic tropes. For example, the scene where Al finds inspiration for “My Bologna” while making a bologna sandwich as The Knack just so happens to be fatefully playing on the radio at that exact moment. The scene where Al comes up with his “original” song “Eat It” is also a clever jab at the way biopics often fudge facts for dramatic effect.
Along the way, there are plenty of cameos (including Weird Al himself), all of whom get plenty of mileage from the maudlin acting style typically seen in biopics. Most of them pop up during a funny Boogie Nights-inspired party scene playing various pop culture figures. (My favorite: Conan O’Brien as Andy Warhol.)
Radcliffe seems to be having fun as Weird Al. It’s certainly one way to shed his Harry Potter image, that’s for sure. Evan Rachel Wood steals the movie though. She’s pitch perfect as Madonna, who seduces Al so he will parody “Like a Virgin” and keep her in the public spotlight.
The film kind of goes off the rails once Al tries to rescue Madonna from the clutches of Pablo Escobar. (That’s a sentence I’d never thought I’d write.) This jaunt into action movie territory is a bit of a stretch to say the least. Overall, the movie would’ve worked like gangbusters at eighty-seven minutes. However, at one-hundred-and-seven minutes, it has a tough time making it to the finish line.
If you love Weird Al like I do, it’s easy to forgive the film for some of its third act lapses. It’s no UHF or anything, but it’s got plenty of laughs. In the end, that’s all that really matters.
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