Walk Hard : The Dewey Cox Story

Review by Anthony Morris

Sketch comedy and movies haven't exactly mixed well in recent years - unless you happen to find the Scary Movie series and its increasingly sloppy spin-offs (Date Movie, Epic Movie) funny, and if that's the case - good work on having read this far! 

Thankfully, with Walk Hard the writer / director team of Judd Apatow and Jake Kadsan do a first-class job of taking the old Zucker Brothers (Flying High, The Naked Gun) style sketch movie and dragging it down the classy end of the swamp.

From his birth down south in the 1940s Dewey Cox (John C Reily) was a living, singing legend, and this is the story of how he came to get that way... and if parts of that story look a lot like scenes from Walk the Line or Ray, so be it. 

This skewers the traditions of the musical biopic with pinpoint accuracy, and then piles on top of that a string of one-off jokes and running gags (the one about how Cox "Don't want no part of this shit" gets better every time) that are just plain funny no matter what the context. Then on top of that there's the performances: Reily's been funny in supporting roles for ages now (he was close to the best thing in Talladega Nights) but as the dim-witted, drug-addled Cox he makes this film work, while the string of purposefully crap cameos as famous musicians (Jack White as a mumbling Elvis; Jack Black, Jason Schwarztman, Paul Rudd and Justin Long as a hysterical take on The Beatles) are a highlight. 

With so many jokes some are bound to fall a little flat, but for the most part this keeps on rocking right to the very end.

To paraphrase Elvis, if you're looking for laughs you came to the right place.

3.5 out of 5

Walk Hard
Australian release: 24th January, 2008
Cast: John C.Reilly, Jenna Fischer, Matt Besser, Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell, Kristen Wiig, Raymond J.Barry, Jonah Hill
Director: Jake Kasdan
Website: Click here.