Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

[Umbran]

Currently watchable for free on the Roku Channel streaming service. Daniel Radcliffe stars as Weird Al, in a parody of rock biopics.

I've been a Weird Al fan for a long, long time, so I was looking forward to this. It doesn't reach the heights of UHF, but it is okay, in a "Good bits in a mixed bag with very unfunny stuff" kind of way. Radcliffe does an excellent job, but some of the material he's got to work with isn't the best.

A lot of Al's humor is based in taking a thing, and overblowing it to the point where it becomes absurd. Unfortunately, if you fail to make it absurd, it comes off as... cringey and even triggering. The "abusive parent" trope in the film unfortunately reaches realistic levels, not absurd ones, and there's some violence that also stops at brutal, rather than going to the point of being absurd. I was watching with two folks who had bad parents growing up, and one had to look away, and the other had to leave the room.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

I really enjoy the movie, especially since it came from a long-ago joke that people wouldn't stop asking when the movie was going to come out.

I feel like it's like the movie Walk Hard, but leans maybe a bit less into the absurd comedy and more into being like Oscar-bait. But, I think it also works because the leads seem to GET the kind of movie they're in and just chew scene after scene. The cameos were great too - like 2/3 of the Lonely Island as Peewee Herman and Alice Cooper or Conan O'brian as Andy Warhol...

 

[Umbran]

Conan O'brian as Andy Warhol...

It looked to me like O'Brian was having a blast

 

[beancounter]

Love Weird Al. My first album was Weird Al in 3D in 1983 or 84, back when he wrote mostly orinal songs.

I was iffy about the movie. Disappointing to hear that it wasn't very good.

 

[Umbran]

I was iffy about the movie. Disappointing to hear that it wasn't very good.

Well, that's my opinion, but I am not everybody. Last I looked, it was running at 88% on the Tomatometer, so lots of people will probably like it.

 

[Ryujin]

I very much enjoyed it. It felt to me very much like I would expect something from the mind of Weird Al to look. I watched an interview in which he mentioned that the Madonna thing came out of a minute or so worth of short conversation he had with her, backstage. Once. Had a lot of fun trying to place all the characters hanging out at Doctor Demento's place.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Just finished it. I enjoyed it. I liked how far it detoured from reality

 

[Vael]

So fun. I love how ... straight they played it. The biopic music cues were sending me, it was all quite well done.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So fun. I love how ... straight they played it. The biopic music cues were sending me, it was all quite well done.

I do think it is one of those films where, the more biopics you've seen, the more entertaining it is

 

[bloodtide]

It was a good movie. Classic Al Comedy.

As always, nearly everyone in the movie is some (semi) famous somebody....like you see the guy and your like "oh, wiat...that is ,um, that guy, er, from..oh, seen him before". And then you get the fun twist of them playing famous people and you get to do the double take and go "wait....is that character.."

'Course, if you have watched say the Weird Al True Hollywood Story, you might notice some discrepancies.