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| WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY (2007)
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SBD Star Rating:
by LEW IRWIN
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 Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, is a spoof of music-star biopics, principally Walk the Line and Ray. And, for the most part, it's getting more applause from the critics than the movies that it imitates. Still, the applause is polite. Writing in the New York Daily News, Jack Mathews comments, "This kind of parody is hard to sustain for an hour and a half, and Walk Hard does get 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." Manohla Dargis in the New York Times writes, "The 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." "Still," says Lou Lumenick in the New York Post, "in a season filled with so many feel-bad movies, don't underestimate the appeal of something as silly as Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." Although the movie is co-written by Judd Apatow, this year's most celebrated filmmaker (Knocked Up), it is star John C. Reilly who receives most of the critical praise. "Reilly's acting is superb as always, but his singing and showmanship are revelatory. The man can channel Cash and The King, Orbison and Dylan, all with a lived-in ease that is far more difficult than it looks," says Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News. And Michael Sragow concludes in the Baltimore Sun: "John C. Reilly should walk easy to stardom with this movie." |
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