Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

No two movies have surprised me more this year than "Everything Everywhere" and now: "Weird"! It's absolutely bonkers, a movie that only Weird Al could have made. This is the parody to end all parodies; it spoofs biopics/music industry and incredibly turns everything upside down by the end, operating by its own rules. It's insanely funny and one of the biggest comedy surprises of the year, and has fantastic use of setups and payoffs with its jokes! My only problem is in the 2nd half it really starts to feel like a sequence of funny or die sketches rather than a movie. But that's okay... it's supposed to be absolutely nuts! Daniel Radcliffe is awesome in role, and I loved all the cameos hidden throughout! Highly recommend checking this out if you can... it's impossible to find though unless you have a Roku... or as Weird Al himself suggested.. pirate it. So good luck trying to watch it, but if you do, you're in for a treat!

For those expecting an honest biopic of 'Weird Al' Yankovic, get serious. This 2022 comedy was a pretty silly, sporadically hilarious reinvention of his life and career reimagined by the subject himself. He has a minor role as a record executive here (one of the Scotti brothers), while Daniel Radcliffe liberates himself credibly as 'Weird Al' after showing off surprising comic chops in "The Lost City" earlier this year. Along with moments of gratuitous, comic book violence, there's a staggering number of celebrity cameos stuffed into this free-wheeling parody of the master parodist, though Evan Rachel Wood has significant screen time playing a believably narcissistic Madonna. Funny stuff but for a selective audience.

We all know the clichés and tropes of the musical biopic; how they add various drama to the subject's backstory to make the journey more interesting and the celebrity himself more admirable and pitiable. Now comes the musical biopic about "Weird Al" Yankovic, which outright actively lies about pretty much everything -- as a joke. And really, could we possibly have asked for a more "Weird Al" thing to do?

For those of you who don't know (which I dearly hope is exactly 0 of you), "Weird Al" Yankovic is the parody artist who rose to prominence in the 1980s with his spoofs of Queen and Michael Jackson and, being that parody is a sort of timeless art, would eventually come to outlast many of the artists he lampooned throughout his career. Because of this, each generation's goofy teenagers have discovered him in their own distinct way. For the true OGs, it was listening to "Eat It" and "Fat" during the MAD Magazine days; for others, it was watching "Smells Like Nirvana" on TV; for me, it was finding "Amish Paradise" and "White & Nerdy" on YouTube circa 2005. There are many eras of Weird Al fans, but we all join hands in loving every era of stupid nonsense he's given us. He is, in summation, essentially synonymous with the very word "parody".

It figures, then, that Weird: The Al Yankovic story would jokingly do for Weird Al what Bohemian Rhapsody did in earnest for Queen. Here he's played by Daniel Radcliffe (who Jay Bauman described as being "completely wrong for the role which is why he's perfect for the role") and it's no doubt part of the joke that he very clearly doesn't supply his own singing voice (á la Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury).

His life is treated with all the over-the-top drama and "gravity" you'd expect from a biopic -- the big moment where he first receives his accordion as though it were Andúril itself, the big epiphany/breakthrough he shares with his astonished roommates when "My Sharona" plays on the radio whilst he's handling some bologna, the exaggerated claims of his subsequent stardom, not to mention the hilariously evil father character, his totally made up liaison with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), and finally all the drugs. It's complete BS, all of it. And that's why it works. (Wait till you see how Michael Jackson comes into play in this version of events.)

The film treats us to many other prominent faces from the worlds of music and comedy, both in terms of which actors appear (from Jack Black and Rainn Wilson to Lin-Manuel Miranda and Emo Phillips) and which celebrities they portray: including but not limited to Doctor Demento, Wolfman Jack, Alice Cooper, Tiny Tim, John Deacon of Queen, Divine, Andy Warhol, and Salvador Dalí. Once again, there are varying degrees of truth as to whether any of these people actually played a part in Yankovic's life.

Overall, this flick was a blast. I had a few problems with the sometimes-bland filmmaking -- which is your average "shot, reverse shot" deal with some purposeful and zany exceptions -- and the odd joke that just didn't stick the landing too well. The funniest thing in the movie is arguably the end credits sequence.

The film was produced by Funny or Die, and for all the times I've roasted movies in the "nostalgia age" for being so absurd and creatively inept that they seem like rejected Funny or Die skits (Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Detective Pikachu, Cruella, etc.), this one actually, literally is adapted from a Funny or Die skit. And as it turns out, when a movie is adapted from a comedy skit (and doesn't just unintentionally feel like one), fun is had by all, even if the skit in question was extended just a tad too far. Catch this one on Roku if you want to see just how stupid it dares to be -- and if you're wondering how to catch it if you don't live in America, allow me to quote a recent tweet from Yankovic himself:

"Roku's working on it. In the meantime, there's VPN (Very Probably No) way to watch it legally. I'm sure you have a TORRENT of other questions, but I have to move along, sorry." We truly do not deserve this man.

There is weird and then there is too weird, there is silly and there is dumb. This move had a bit too much dumb for me and went beyond dumb too many times. It's entertainment but I've just barely got past halfway and the feeling of turning it off started to creep in. I've gotten 3/4 the way through and can just shut if off and not finish it. The first 30 minutes or so were pretty good, I was having no problem watching it and it was enjoyable for the most part and soon after it rapidly began to degrade. It is Weird Al after all, so I shouldn't have expected it to be any less than what was delivered here, but it would have been fine as a more genuine story of his life than to make it so absurd, it went from a mildly believable telling of his story to just outrageous goofball nonsense. If the story was that A. L. F. Was Weird Al and Punky Brewster's love-child it wouldn't have been any less strange than the story that was told here and might have been just as entertaining. There were a few laughs here and there, but it went from hope to nope for me rather fast. I just don't know if I can bring myself to finish the last bit of it, I just don't really care how they decide to finish this story, it really doesn't matter, it's just so dumb and unbelievable they could have written anything and it doesn't matter to me.

I hope few people walk into this thinking it's a serious biopic, you'll be in for quite the surprise. Although Weird starts in a conventional manner, you'll realize that a devotion to reality wasn't the primary goal of the film. It's a parody of the music biopic genre, think Walk Hard instead of Walk the Line or Ray. But the tone and vibe is a little different. Instead of winking at the audience or pausing for laughter, the cast and the crew play it completely straight as if the material was factual. This is an admirable choice, it allows you to pick up on a few jokes that are specifically making fun of movies like this. It reminded me a little of the Naked Gun movies, it fires off gags continually and Weird isn't worried about you catching every single one of them. Weird bounces from scene to scene and you're either going to cruise right along with it or get left in the dust.

Some actors/actresses are natural born chameleons but other A-list talents aren't required to stretch into different characters. Their natural charisma carries them and they get away with playing the same character with a different name several times over. Daniel Radcliffe is a talent but he also possesses a rare versatility. He doesn't just take the easy layups, he does strange and exciting projects and I'm becoming a bigger and bigger fan of his with each movie I see him in. He's great in Weird, he's obviously giving it his all and his enthusiasm is infectious. He's also really funny and hopefully this will be a showcase for his comedic talent as well. Between this and The Lost City, he's having a great year. Evan Rachel Wood is excellent as Madonna, she's playing up her bombshell angle from moment one but she's great at it and she plays off Radcliffe really well. She's very funny in her own right and their performances together were my favourite part of the movie. Rainn Wilson is a pleasant addition as Dr. Demento, he's wacky enough without pushing the envelope too far. Al Yankovic cameos in a nice meta role as music exec Tony Scotti. There are too many celebrity cameos to list but every member of the cast gets what the movie is going for and there aren't any missteps or false notes from anyone performing.

Weird rarely misses and the aspects I didn't like weren't things the movie did wrong. There was a conscious choice to keep going bigger and more outlandish as the plot unfolded and there was a moment that I disconnected from it just because of how divorced from reality it became. This will work for some people, it just didn't for me. The humour had been pretty pointed at genre tropes and Al's material before and it just became more and more broad with each deviation. I still laughed throughout the entire run time but I still would have went another direction.

Weird's amiable nature and stellar lead performances won me back every time I started to waver on it. It's above all else a celebration of the sweet and goofy nature of Yankovic's work and it's hard to fault the movie for trying to blaze a path of it's own even if it's execution is scattershot. I'm glad Weird is receiving some well earned buzz and while I'd actually rate it as a 7.5/10, I'll round up to an 8/10. It may not be a "must view" theatre experience but it's a rare enough parody that's worth checking out on streaming if you get the chance.