Music biopics are typically boring, and a straight one about Weird Al Yankovic would likely be the most boring. Because Weird Al’s story as an artist is not at all turbulent or interesting. He was discovered as a teenager by the Dr. Demento radio show, began recording parodies of popular songs that took off, and eventually he kind of accidentally became a cultural icon for his music and image. He never was the subject of any scandals, got along well with everyone he’s worked with in the industry, and never sold out or compromised his style all that much. But the idea of Weird Al, with his goofy music and personal aesthetic, going down the dark road of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll is inherently hilarious. Funny or Die realized it when they made one of their best viral videos back in 2010: a faux trailer for “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story”, which imagined such a formula rockstar biopic about Weird Al, featuring Aaron Paul in the title role and including such things as an illicit affair with Madonna, a childhood marked by unaccepting parents, and a debilitating alcohol problem. It was great! And then somewhere over the years, director Eric Appel and Yankovic himself decided to make it into a real movie; and there is poetry in the concept: what better way to ring in a timely parody of the music biopic genre than with perhaps pop culture’s foremost parody musician?
Of course the risk that Weird: The Al Yankovic Story runs in this is whether the joke that worked so well as a three minute short can withstand a feature-length runtime –essentially it’s the equivalent of expanding a Saturday Night Live sketch into a movie, which has failed more often than its’ worked. And there are definitely parts of the finished product where the premise feels stretched thin –it doesn’t have the ingenuity or sustainability of its’ most obvious counterpart, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. And yet that it does manage to go a distance with its’ joke speaks to a certain richness there in the persona and career of Weird Al contrasted with the tropes of the American music business and the mores of Hollywood screenwriting. It’s got legs for its’ shallowness.
Daniel Radcliffe plays Weird Al in a bit of inspired lunatic casting. The star of Swiss Army Man, Horns, and Guns Akimbo, he could legitimately be called one of the weirdest actors working today, and he is veritably something of a comedy music nerd. Expectedly, he takes to the role with aplomb, playing a version of Weird Al who is chasing parental and peer validation, and whose lifelong ambition has always been to “make up new words to a song that already exists." The first time he does this is a great skewering of the trademark hacky inspiration moment that just about every music biopic has, where the subject draws one of their biggest hits from something innocuous: in this case simply making a bologna sandwich while “My Sharona” plays on the radio. The esteemed sense of brilliance each of his featured songs is treated with never loses lustre, and reaches its’ peak with a vivid drug trip that results in “Eat It”, which the movie will have you know is an original song.
Basically all of the beats in this movie (and several of the lines) were there in that original comedy sketch without Appel making much an attempt to change them. And the movie sticks pretty closely to those tropes of the biopic formula that it could feel beholden to them. But in this it is quite the perfect marriage of form and subject, as the very silliness of that formula being applied to Weird Al makes the movie far more reflective of his style as an artist than ninety per cent of the biopics that play straight in the very same structural sandbox. Nonetheless, there is only so far the mere notion of Weird Al being a difficult pop star, who wears his gold records around his neck and has a scandalous relationship with Madonna, played here by Evan Rachel Wood, can go. And there are sections of the movie that drag a touch, not supported enough with the kind of manic energy that one might expect from these kind of parodies, whether they be Walk Hard or Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping or even the good Zucker Brothers films (in which of course Weird Al himself regularly made cameos). When such a leap is attempted, it is at odds. One particular episode takes Weird Al into Pablo Escobar’s empire deep in Colombia in an effort to bring something more openly ridiculous to the table (and indeed it does feel like something out of UHF), but doesn’t quite work given how it strains the periphery of the films’ realm of focus in the music industry, and never commits as fully to its’ lunacy as the situation would require. It’s a scene out of a different kind of comedy movie that has nothing to with Weird Al or the celebrity business; although it does have one amazing gag pay-off and sets up the movies’ bonkers ending.
That ending is one of the greatest moments, and not just because it seems to play off of one of my favourite movies. It is a final gasp of outrageous silliness that very much is on brand for those who know Weird Al’s occasionally deranged sense of humour. But I don’t mean to suggest it was an outlier or that some of the less inspired or ill-fitting plotting led to a deficiency in jokes. In fact the movie’s sustained sense of humour is one of its’ chief assets and there are several standout bits: an in-media res opening where Weird Al comes up with “Like a Surgeon” as he’s being legally pronounced dead by Lin-Manuel Miranda. There’s the probably unintentional irony of Julianne Nicholson playing Weird Al’s mother having just appeared in the same capacity for Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. It could be argued the movie relies a bit too much on its’ cameos, but most of them feel right for the kind of figures showing up. A party scene at Dr. Demento’s house (Demento played as a mooching father-figure by Rainn Wilson) is filled with appearances from specifically L.A. comedy weirdos playing all manner of 70s subculture weirdos (Jack Black as Wolfman Jack, Emo Phillips as Salvador Dali, Conan O’Brien as Andy Warhol, Paul F. Tompkins as Gallagher), and it’s great! An earlier scene at a biker bar where Weird Al performs “Rocky Road” features the hysterical visual of Dr. Demnto in full bow tie, waistcoat, and top hat sitting in this atmosphere surrounded by exposed muscles, tattoos, and leather. Near the end there is a great subtle gag about Al’s lack of moustache in “Amish Paradise” -itself here sourced to a bewildering, tragic backstory. And Hay Boy is brilliant, more Hay Boy please!
Marginally less weird than might be implied by its’ title, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a fun time -a silly satire of a genre that can never be made fun of enough that reliably tells you little about Weird Al’s biography but quite a bit about his humourous character. Full disclosure as a Weird Al fan who’s seen him twice in concert, it’s kind of amazing and surreal to see a project like this in 2022 celebrating him (and to the ire of maybe some of his fans, it is an overall better movie than UHF). He maybe never in real life reached the heights of fame depicted in this film, but he is an icon nonetheless, and for someone who achieved that by basically riffing on other people’s creativity, he is a wholly unique one too. Remember to stay weird everybody -the one sincere message of the film- you never know how far it’ll get you.
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