I'm running hard towards the end of this week's reviews.

The movie "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," and I have an interesting history. I was all set to see this movie for free during my Phoenix days of weasling my way into free movie previews. But with free movie previews, there are always choices to be made. I also had tickets for "Sweeney Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street," playing on the same night. And Sweeney Todd had Johnny Depp. Johnny Depp is a great actor of renown. And all the important reviewers said that his performance was spectacular. And the movie was lauded as a wonderful movie. So I decided to see the great movie, Sweeney Todd. Yeah, bad move. You would think after all this time I would have figured out that official movie reviewers don't know squat. They don't speak for the common man. Sweeney Todd sucked balls.

Part of the reason it sucked is because it is a musical. Unless it is a Dracula rock opera with puppets, a musical sucks. The better way to incorporate music more fully into a movie other than having a great soundtrack is to have a comedic fake documentary on a rock icon. And that is what "Walk Hard," is. This is another movie that I had low expectations for. I saw the preview. Thought that it looked stupid. Saw the opening scene on the movie website. Thought that looked predicatable. Figured the whole movie would be like a recent Will Farrell movie; insipid, predictable, forced laughs. Yeah, I am still ragging on Will Farrell. He had such promise!

But again, I was pleasantly surprised. Walk Hard is a pretty funny movie. It stars John C. Reilly as the title character. It is co-wrote by Judd Apatow. Where have I seen his name before? I didn't set out to review Apatow movies. I don't think Warren did either. Judd, and his cohorts, are just talented, funny guys. Reilly lately has been playing the same hapless shnook for a few movies in a row. The latest being his movie with Will Farrell, The Stepbrothers, which Warren reviewed earlier. But I will give a pass to John C. for the moment. First, he hasn't done as many movies as Farrell reprising essentially the same role. Second, he is extremely funny in this role. Bluntly, I think that Reilly is a better actor and can probably pull off doing the same character over and over again longer than Farrell because Reilly adds enough subtle nuances to his performances and his movies have better scripts than Farrell's.

This script follows a fairly predictable arc. But that is the point. Rock biopics are fairly predictable. Rock star has humble beginnings. Tradgedy befalls the protaganist who resolves to overcome the initial setback. In this case, he slices his brother in half while playing around with machettes in the barn. He learns to play the blues from an old black man down at the county store. He plays a school talent competition where the demon music he and his band play incite a riot. He marries his 14 year-old high school sweetheart and immediately has three kids. He works as a janitor at a nightclub where he gets his big break. He records his seminal song, Walk Hard, which becomes a hit and rockets him to stardom. He tries marijuana. He ditches his high school sweetheart for a cute backup singer, Jenna Fischer from The Office. He does cocaine. Somewhere in there he does other drugs. His backup singer ditches him in disgust of the pathetic mess he has become. Decades later he cleans up his act, reconnects with his kids, reconnects with Jenna Fischer, and in the final scene he plays a new song which sums up his entire career at a benefit concert that he is being honored at. Immediately after which he dies. Rock Legend.

Like I said, fairly predicatble. And a perfect parody of all the rock documentaries that have come out lately. Instead of going blind like Ray Charles, he loses his sense of smell after cutting his brother in half. In many other scenes, cliches are played out. Funny stuff. On just the script alone it would be a good movie. I have to say, though, that it has one other thing going for it. I liked the songs. They were well written. Kind of catchy. I have found myself humming them on occasion. Yes, they are written for humorous effect and there are plenty of double entendres, but that adds to their appeal.

I end this review on a disturbing note. There is one scene in the movie, towards the middle. Dewey Cox has achieved success. He is usually away from his family, travelling on the road to give as many concerts as he can. We all know that the road can be a hard place. In the scene, it is after the concert (or maybe before, you can't really tell). Dewey and his band and various hangers on are in a hotel room partying. His wife calls him on the phone. At this point it is still his high school sweetheart. As he is talking to her, the camera pans back and we can see that there are naked people all over the place. And then off to the right of the screen, the bottom portion of a naked male torso appears. At face height is a dangling johnson. Dewey says something like "Wait a minute man. I'm talking to my wife." And then to his wife on the phone, "Oh, that was just so and so, one of the roadies." My point being, why must we have graphic nudity in films? Warren brought this up in an earlier post. I will need to address this issue.

Matthew