Whether it’s Popstar: Never Stop Stopping or Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, films tearing up the rule book most musical biopics play by is nothing new. But there perhaps isn’t a more fitting artist for the mold than Al Yankovic who, famously, has made a career riffing on famous songs. It’s only apt, then, that Weird: The Al Yankovic Story lives up to that same promise.
Indeed, director Eric Appel very quickly establishes what kind of film this is going to be – skewing a dramatic opening of Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe) being wheeled through an emergency room with a funny gag, overtly dramatic narration, and a cameo that settles us into the silliness of the proceedings with ease. What follows is a film that, much like the titular artist’s own music, parodies the classics of the industry with irreverence and glee; Weird embraces the tropes and cliches of not only the musical biopic but of a plethora of genres as it dips its toes into even action, romance, and horror to tell the story of how Al became the single greatest accordion player to ever do it.
Considering Yankovic has made a career out of being silly, toying around with what has already been established, and largely for a comedic effect, it feels fitting that the film does the same. And, in many ways, this is what makes Weird such a faithful biopic – not in its narrative per se which takes a lot of creative liberties (this is a world in which Madonna and Pablo Escobar are Yankovic’s greatest adversities) but in how it best encapsulates exactly who the subject was. If we compare Weird to the likes of Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis, those stay true to the stories of those artists but fail to capture their very spirit in the way that this does. It’s a fine line to tow though and when the jokes slow down in the middle act, you can’t help but feel there’s very little else going on here.
Attempts at sentimentality or emotion are always undercut with a joke that, while admittedly funny, means Weird is devoid of any real depth when it’s all said and done. That being said, Appel is acutely aware of the movie he’s making and it’s a film that delights in spades – consistently hilarious and continually outdoing itself in just silly it can get. Radcliffe is a game lead too and his unwavering commitment to the absurdity is a lot of fun to watch. At the end of the day, that’s all Weird is: just good fun. It’s riotously entertaining and sometimes that’s all you need a film to be.
‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ is released on The Roku Channel on Friday, November 4, 2022.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
Summary
Great fun and a brilliant central performance from Radcliffe – ‘Weird’ is riotously entertaining throughout.
