Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.

"John C Reilly hops aboard the Judd Apatow gravy train with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a parody of biopics that finds the comedic impresario working in the absurdist mode of 2004's Anchorman rather than the vulgar-sweet rom-com vein of this year's Knocked Up," writes Nick Schager in Slant.

"As Dewey Cox, a hard-livin', hard-lovin', hard-everythingin' singer with a Zelig-like proximity to every major music figure of the past 50 years, Reilly cuts a hilarious and electrifying figure - live," writes Jim Ridley in the Voice. "On a recent promo tour, playing Nashville's Mercy Lounge in a concert that was part Spinal Tap, part Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and completely riotous, Reilly slipped hungrily into the guise of a surly, self-obsessed spotlight hog.... [H]e was funny as hell. Sadly, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story isn't."

Updated through 12/23.

But Dennis Harvey, writing at SF360, finds it "pretty funny.... Incongruously, 2007 has given us a bumper crop of good movie musicals: Dreamgirls (a 2006 film that didn't reach most viewers until the new year), Hairspray, Sweeney Todd, Enchanted, the low-budget local indie Colma: The Musical and others raised the bar for a genre many had thought extinct. Walk Hard isn't strictly a 'musical' - at least no more or less so than This Is Spinal Tap - but it is hands-down the funniest of the bunch."

"While Walk Hard isn't the most gut-busting product ever to tumble from the Apatow factory, it's got some priceless moments," writes Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "[A]ccomplished warbler Reilly is nothing if not totally committed to the role, and the supporting cast (including big-name stars portraying the Beatles, Elvis, and others) make damn sure they bring the funny, including some extraordinarily gratuitous full-frontal nudity."

For the New York Times, Eric Wilson talks with costume designer Debra McGuire: "The best way to make the clothes funny from my perspective was to make them as real as possible."

Update: For Filmmaker, Nick Dawson talks with director Jake Kasdan "about his wide-ranging work, the comic potential of the name 'Cox,' and the current WGA strike."

Updates, 12/20: "Could we be so lucky that the Judd Apatow revolution that ruled Hollywood last summer with Knocked Up and Superbad is already over?" asks Armond White in the New York Press. Walk Hard "has considerably less smut humor to flatter the TV-bred audience's own sexual insecurities, so Apatow's desperation is exposed."

Brent Rolen talks with Reilly and Kasdan for the Nashville Scene.

"It is, perhaps, difficult to keep gags afloat for 90 minutes when a show like Robot Chicken can smartly satirize all six Star Wars movies in 22 minutes, and the strain of keeping the plates spinning definitely shows in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which starts out brilliantly playing with the tired tropes of musical biopics before utterly losing its way," writes Alonso Duralde for MSNBC.

For Cinematical, Ryan Stewart files a junket report.

"[T]his is unabashedly a goof from the get-go, and the presence of past and future Saturday Night Live alums ensure that 10 seconds do not go by without another joke," writes Eric Alt in Premiere. "Such rapid-fire silliness, as you might expect, results in some jokes hitting, some falling flat, but very few moments of absolute boredom. There are certainly a lot of laugh-out-loud moments, which is more than can be said about a lot of alleged comedies."

Updates, 12/23: "Born to be mild, Dewey is cuddly and cute, not Iggy or pop," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "Partly as a consequence, the film is more funny ha-ha than LOL."

"Walk Hard is pieced together from scraps of agreeable silliness; at moments it shows a certain throwaway brilliance," writes Salon's Stephanie Zacharek. "But in the end, it's just a concept decorated with jokes, more of an extended sketch than a canvas with every inch filled in."

"Apatow and Kasdan are skilled at getting the most out of gifted ensembles, but there's a world of difference between the sweet, character-based comedy of Apatow's The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, and the vaudevillian wackiness of Walk Hard," writes Scott Tobias at the AV Club. "Fortunately, they're blessed by having John C Reilly, an endlessly nimble and endearing performer, to lead the film through its rough patches."

Reilly "can do plausible versions of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and on and on," writes Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times. "He's like a kid who locked himself in his room singing along with his record collection and finally made it pay off."

"[T]his gleefully jaundiced skewering of American popular music in general and biopics like Walk the Line and Ray in particular knows that humor comes from both loving your source material and knowing it inside out," writes Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times.

"Not since This is Spinal Tap have I had such a good time watching amiable idiocy stumble on toward uncertain glory," writes Richard Schickel in Time.

Posted by dwhudson at December 19, 2007 1:35 AM