I'm a big fan of John C. Reilly, he was awesome in Magnolia and Chicago and a lot of fun in Talladega Nights. And writer/producer Judd Apatow dispensed a great deal of sidesplitting laughter to audiences earlier this year with Knocked up and Superbad. Perhaps it's unfair to compare, but I can't help it, "Walk Hard," while a cute enough film, just doesn't have the same laugh quota.
Clearly the target of the spoof are the recent Music Bio films Walk the Line and Ray about the lives of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles, respectively. Admittedly, a spoof of these films isn't a bad idea as their story lines so often converge that a melodramatic bio-pic formula emerges. Apatow and crew enjoy hitting all those emotional moments with grossly exaggerated impact. It's funny sometimes, more often cute. An SNL sketch may have been a better vehicle for such a spoof though. When put on the big screen, the spoof ends up having a film life of its own. Ironically, it becomes a music bio pic in order to sustain itself.
That said, I particularly enjoyed the meeting of the Beatles in India. Paul Rudd does a very funny John Lennon.
Apatow says, "John has a voice like Roy Orbison and he's built like Johnny Cash. He was a great combination of all these people. We met with him early on - before we wrote the script – and told him a little bit about the outline. Then, when we were done with the script, we gave it to John and we begged and begged and begged."
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