It’s fairly unusual for a screenwriter to be the driving force behind a film’s reputation, but that’s exactly the case with Walk Hard. ‘From the guy who brought you Knocked Up and Superbad’, the posters boast, without bothering to mention the poor schmuck’s name. No wonder the scribblers are striking.
The neglected moniker is Judd Apatow – writer, producer and undisputed king of comedy, for the time being at least. Apatow and his chums have risen swiftly, raising the bar for the genre with a succession of excellent efforts. And therein lies the problem with Walk Hard. This latest project is not bad – in fact, it’s frequently very funny. But as a parody of music biopics, with the satire aimed squarely at Walk the Line, one can’t help but feel disappointed at its lack of ambition.
John C Reilly plays the eponymous Dewey, a nondescript country boy who discovers the blues after the violent death of his brother. The first half-hour snipes at genre conventions with relentless silliness: Cox learns the guitar in less than a minute, and after getting hitched his wife starts pumping out kids at a comparable speed. After that we’re off on the road as our hero discovers the joys of a career in music – which here translates to a lot of drugs, knob jokes and a gleefully crap impression of the Beatles, with Paul Rudd and Jack Black as Lennon and McCartney.
It’s endearingly daft, provided that you’re open to its puerile antics. What it won’t do, however, is make you think or feel – but then maybe we’re just spoiled after the resplendent quality of Knocked Up. It’s a single sketch stretched to 90 minutes, but if you’re in the mood for a helping of wilful stupidity, you could do far worse than this.
