- Studio: Columbia Pictures
- Release Date: Dec 21, 2007
- Critic Score
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91For 45 minutes, it zings along on perfectly pitched overstatement.
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90Not since "This is Spinal Tap" have I had such a good time watching amiable idiocy stumble on toward uncertain glory.
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80A pitch-perfect musical comedy that at long last moves the talented John C. Reilly up the billing ladder from second banana to top banana.
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80Smart and genial satire.
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75Reilly is required to walk a tightrope; is he suffering or kidding suffering, or kidding suffering about suffering? That we're not sure adds to the appeal.
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75This kind of parody is hard to sustain for an hour and a half, and "Walk Hard" does gets wearying at times. But the humor is so outrageous, the original music so much fun and Reilly so good - both while hamming it up in the role and in singing the songs - that it's irresistible.
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75For pure, uncomplicated enjoyment, it's the movie to see right now.
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75If you want to escape all the deadly serious fare of this pre-awards season, run to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.Why? Cox rocks. This rowdy spoof of music biopics is silly fun and often hilarious.
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75The first 30 or so minutes of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story condense the entire Hollywood biopic genre into a sweet chewable tablet. It's the Flintstones vitamin of spoofs.
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75The movie walks the line of surreal vulgarity (you will not, repeat not, expect the penis), yet most of it, intentionally, is less nutzoid than your average megaplex genre parody.
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75It should be noted that Walk Hard is aimed at a fairly specific sort of movie subgenre -- it's practically an extended "SNL" sketch -- and it doesn't produce belly laughs so much as steady smiles of recognition over how accurately it's nailing its target. But it really nails that target.
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75John C. Reilly, with his homely face and mop of curly hair, has been the movies' second banana of choice since his debut in 1989's "Casualties o War." In the comedy, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," he finally gets a starring role and he rises to the challenge.
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70The film is more funny ha-ha than LOL; it's a smarty-pants satire that mocks and embraces almost every cliché in the biography playbook.
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It's apparent that the sharp comic forces behind this epic are simply a couple of juvenile men who think it's hilarious to show a man's penis on screen just for the sake of itself. But the embarrassing truth is that, well, sometimes it is.
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67Walk Hard offers a quantity of laughs that few comedies could match, yet it's likely to leave viewers vaguely unsatisfied, particularly when the closing minutes completely run out of steam. That's the danger of spoofs: You're only as good as your last laugh.
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63The tricky thing about parody movies is that the jokes get old fast and they're hit-and-miss. Walk Hard, a spoof of every musical biopic from "Ray" to "Walk the Line," is guilty on both counts. How lucky that when the jokes do hit, they kick major ass.
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63The tunes are so good, you can't believe the film itself doesn't amount to more, especially with the rightness of the casting. Still, a few laughs are better than none.
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63I loved both "Walk the Line" and "Ray," but it will be hard to watch either one with a straight face again after the skewering they get in this Judd Apatow production, which quotes scene after scene to hilarious effect.
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63While it might not have the laughs-per-minute ratio of the "Naked Gun" movies (but then, what does?), it is a reliable titter generator for boomers and their echo boomlings.
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63When Cox is performing, the movie is firing on all cylinders.
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63For those who enjoy the saturation style of humor and appreciate the way in which parody is not pushed too far into the absurd, Walk Hard is not without merit.
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63So you'll laugh, you'll groan, you'll leave the theater singing "I'm gonna beat off….all my demons/That's what lovin' Jesus is all about" -- and isn't that, ultimately, a good thing? Yes.
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63The movie manages a couple of popcorn-spitting-funny jokes for each biographical decade the film covers, though typically it's no better than moderately clever.
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60Is Walk Hard" funny? Sure; very much so, in places. At least I think it is. It might just be the "Date Movie" talking.
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60John C Reilly just about holds together a funny but patchy comedy that puts a ten-megaton bomb under the cliched rock biopic – and never detonates it.
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60Strums the genre for considerable laughs, with John C. Reilly playing the title balladeer from teen to senior citizen, generating enough goodwill to offset the flat sections and a decidedly juvenile streak.
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50Funniest in its first half, when you're not quite sure where it's going, and drags in the second, by which time you realize it's going nowhere.
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This burlesque of biopic clichés flounders from one setup to the next without the engine that drives the genre: a strong central character.
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50The best part of Walk Hard, oddl enough, is the music. I might not care to see Walk Hard" a second time, but I can't wait to hear it again.
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50Walk Hard runs down quickly, and suffers further from having the wide-eyed and weightless Reilly as its star.
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50Apatow and director Jake Kasdan deliver a fair number of laughs, though nearly every good idea is pressed into service as a running gag. The biggest disappointment is their survey of rock history, which has all the depth of a Time-Life book.
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38The film is a saggy, oddly mean-spirited takeoff of "Walk the Line."
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 25 out of 44
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Mixed: 5 out of 44
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Negative: 14 out of 44
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ShammySham10
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MikeR.5Some laughs, but pretty unfunny overall.
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PatP9