Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

At first, this “biopic” on Weird Al Yankovic starts by hitting all the beats and formulas of the Hollywood biopic genre, before co-writer and director Eric Appel and co-writer/producer “Weird Al” Yankovic take on Weird Al’s own spirit of parodying every element of the biopic fashion in the most over-the-top way possible. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story generates a lot of belly laughs, with Daniel Radcliffe playing the iconic songwriter and musician from his early college years to his rise to success up to Amish Paradise. The film, which is based on a Funny or Die sketch, plays loosely with the facts and essentially becomes a parody, just like Weird Al’s music. This direct to streaming film, which airs on Roku, will bring in a lot of viewers, and the film will certainly be up for discussion on social media platforms.

More in the vein of Walk Hard: The Dew Cox Story than any routine biopic, Appel and Yankovic deliver quite a comedic romp with many hilarious moments and cameos, Appel and Yankovic end up taking a lot of creative liberties in their hands and building up alternative realities, fabrications, and fantasies of crazy things only the iconic Weird Al probably could think of. Infused with a sense of parody and satire of biopic movie tropes that seems to never get exhausted from just how silly and over-the-top its conceived, the film chronicles the life of a young Al, from his boyhood tension and lack of support from his father to his rise to stardom that led to alcoholism, and a fictionalized relationship with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), who uses Weird Al in hopes that he can parody one of her songs.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story takes the identical approach Weird Al did with such classic songs as “Beat It” and “Gangsters Paradise”—he parodies them, imitates it, and deconstructs them. The film is also charming, moving, and a joy overall. Everything in the film is mostly fabricated, besides Weird Al’s friendship with Dr. Nemento (Rainn Wilson) and, of course, his songs. There is even a hilarious joke that Al eventually wrote his original songs and that Michael Jackson ended up parodying “Eat It” with “Beat It.” Yes, this is the year of multiverses. The film is also filled with sincerity, hilarious pop culture jokes, and impressively staged musician sequences, and the film holds great spirits with its lampoon approach.

The film opens with a young Al growing up in his suburban household with his supportive mother, Mary (Julianne Nicholson), and his strict workaholic father, Nick (Toby Huss), who believes his song is just too “weird.” Young Al even performs a parody of “Amazing Grace” and calls it “Amazing Grapes,” and his father instantly begrudges his dreams and passions. Al keeps his passion and talent hidden from his dad throughout his teenage years, and he discovers his talents after he astonishes his fellow high school classmates at a party. Al is disowned by his family, but he finds his creative liberties for once at his dorm with his college roommates, who eventually become fellow band members.

After getting turned down by just about every local band at auditions, Al’s self-esteem is lowered, and as he makes bologna sandwiches, the song “My Sharona” by The Knack comes on, and Al instantly improvises the song. By hilarious measures, the film greatly exaggerates Weird Al’s rise to fame. He ends up gaining instant notoriety after performing “I Love Rocky Road” at a small concert venue. He grabs the attention of Dr. Demento (Wilson), the L.A. radio personality who takes him under his wing and gets more of his songs into the public eye. At a pool party at Dr. Demento’s house, we see some of the most hilarious cameos playing the most eccentric artists in the public eye during that era. There is Divine, Pee-wee Herman, Frank Zappa, Alice Cooper, Salvadore Dali, and Conan O’Brien as Andy Warhol. The most standout cameo is by Wolfman Jack (Jack Black), who challenges Al to improvise a song on the spot if he’s such a genius. At first, it appears he chokes up only for him to freestyle “Another One Rides the Bus” in front of Wolfman Jack and in, Queen’s bass player John Deacon (David Dastmalchian).

The film has great pleasures with its creative liberties in greatly exaggerating his success, as in the narrative he becomes bigger than Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stone, and is on par with the Beatles’ success as songs top the charts. Weird Al turns down the role of being the next James Bond, Michael Jackson actually wrote Beat It after Eat It, and Weird Al holds a “hard pass” on performing with Queen at Live Aid. The scenes of Al getting interviewed by Oprha Winfrey (Quinta Brunson) are also scene-stealers. Yankovic and Appel are certainly having a with these exaggerations, and Radcliffe is certainly having a blast with the role; he brings a pleasurable amount of earnestness and zaniness to the role. While looking nothing like Weird Al and being much shorter, we still buy him as the role with his Hawaiian shirts, oversized eyeglasses, mustache, and curly hair. Throughout the course of the narrative, he meets Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), who he falls in love with, and she ends up using the relationship for her own personal gain. Meanwhile, Al becomes more narcissistic, but, deep down inside, wants to make amends with his parents. His mother doesn’t take his success seriously, and his dad still believes parodying songs isn’t an art form.

While the first half of the film is pure comedic genius, sadly the same can’t be said with the second half, as it exhausts most of its fumes and runs out of its comedic momentum. It involves a lot of self-loathing, and the humor eventually becomes dull, and the film takes some severely unfunny detours that include some action-parody involving Al’s alcoholism, which undermines his creative sparks. The film becomes even more unfunny with a subplot where Al becomes a Rambo-like action hero (a reference to UHF) that involves Al having to rescue Madonna in Central America from Pablo Escobar (Arthur Castro) and his cartel after he refuses to play for him in person. Despite these quibbles, the film rises to the occasion and gets back on track once Al reconnects with his estranged parents, where many hilarious secrets are revealed about just where Al’s passion for lampooning music really comes from.

The film even has amusingly inane timelines, where Amish Paradise is released in 1985 instead of 1995, in which Amish Paradise rivals against Prince, and he gets an award from 80s-era Hulk Hogan, and the story leaves off there. The film is all deliberately inventive and zany, and it appears Weird Al succumbs to all the biopic cliches with uncomplicated joy. While it’s certainly hit-and-miss, some of the jokes do wear thin after a while. However, when the jokes do work, they are quite hysterical. This is a film that should appease any viewer searching for some laughs.