Daniel Radcliffe plays Weird Al Yankovic in this stirring biography, charting the musical wonder's life from a childhood spent surreptitiously learning the accordion when his overbearing father wasn't around, up to Al's heart-breaking death in a burst of drug war-fueled violence.
As far as parodies of musician biopics go, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is still the standard-bearer. Weird is not at that level. Not quite as sharp, uneven in quality. Not as many memorable lines. Although, 'This seems more like a whiskey and. . .heroin crowd,' has stuck with me so far. I thought it was strongest when leaning into its more absurd notions. Getting weird, so to speak.
The romance with a publicity-hungry Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), which in just 5 hours turns Al into an egotistical, drunken prick who insults his band, his fans, and gets himself arrested for lewd behavior (playing an accordion in public.) The whole thing with Pablo Escobar, or Yankovic coming up with the entirely original song "Eat It," after consuming guac laced with LSD, only to have Michael Jackson make a parody of it. A parody that isn't even about food!
I'm pretty Radcliffe is lip-synching whenever he sings any of Weird Al's songs. Either that or he is doing an incredible impression, albeit the version of "Another Rides the Bus" sounded like someone used auto-tune on it. Badly. Either way, it's fine. Radcliffe definitely captures Yankovic's mannerisms and nasally screech he used when especially aggravated or freaked out in UHF.
The movie is so strongly focused on Weird Al that most of the other characters aren't more than cameos. Talking props, essentially. Wood does fine with what she's got to work with for the movie's version of Madonna. Playing her as alternately distracted or sweet, but always with ulterior motives which are, of course, meant to be entirely obvious to the audience. Rainn Wilson plays a character Al looked up to as a child, who becomes his manager after a live performance. He gets one good bit late in the film, after he opens himself up emotionally, but too late! Al already had an important emotional reconciliation!
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