Walk Hard
- Title: Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
- IMDb: link
“It ain’t easy to walk to the top of a mountain. It’s a long hard walk, but I will walk hard.”
The collaboration between Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow is a perfect parody of recent overly serious and sentimental music biopics like Walk the Line and Ray which examine the entire life of an artist with all the skill and depth of a Behind the Music special. The film follows Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly, who plays the character from the age of 14 to 71) who faces the tragic death of his brother to an unfortunate machete accident, the disapproval of his father (Raymond J. Barry), drugs, booze, and women, to become a legend.
Although it helps if you’ve seen the films this one parodies it’s not a necessity to get most of the jokes (though you will miss some of more subtle moments including specific shots and camera work). Reilly is terrific in a role that let’s him prove just what a great dumbass he can play. And, as he proved in A Prairie Home Companion (read that review), he can sing. It’s a combination of the music and sharp unrelenting wit that transforms this film from the regular mass produced parodies like the Scary Movie franchises, and moves into the elite company with This Is Spinal Tap and Airplane.
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Brutally violent, with eloquently scripted dialogue and sumptuously cinematography No Country for Old Men has all the pieces in place for a great film, but although it’s certainly a very good film it loses much of its momentum over the course of its two-hour running time ending with more of a whimper than a bang.
I’ve been reading the Harry Potter series for just over nine years now. I’ve spent countless hours reading and rereading the books, discussing them with my friends, and even protesting a radio station for ruining the last book’s ending on-air before I finished it. With all of my history with the books, is it even close to possible for series author J.K. Rowling to end this story that I’ve grown up with to my satisfaction?