Flashback Review! Walk Hard

Tim and I were looking for something to watch on On Demand, and he decided on Walk Hard. I kept referring to my review when we talked about it, and I thought, "Hey, I should share this on the blog." So, I dug into my archives and found the review I wrote for Critics Rant. Enjoy!

The sophomoric comedy will never die. There are great ones like Animal House. There are horrible ones like Dumb and Dumberer. And there are those that fall a bit in between. I think that’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. I can’t really say, though, because I’m still trying to wrap my brain around this mock biopic.

From the first moment of the movie, I thought I knew exactly what I was in store for. A stage manager runs around backstage looking for Mr. Cox. “I need Cox. Where’s Cox?” (Haha. Funny.) When he finds the singer, he’s leaning against a wall in a dark hallway ala Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line. Then Tim Meadows pops up, and in his always perfect deadpan voice says, “Dewey Cox has to think about his whole life before he performs.” I was actually surprised when there was no generic dream-blur transition.

From here, we learn the life story of Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly). Starting back when he was a little boy and accidentally killed his older, "perfect" brother Nate. At 14, Dewey plays in front of his first audience. His music is a hit with the kids but the adults think it’s the devil’s music. His father, after saying, “The wrong kid died,” (for the second but definitely not the last time) kicks 14-year-old Dewey out of the house. So Dewey, along with his 12-year-old girlfriend Edith (Kristen Wiig), move out and start a life of their own.

After having more children than anyone should (I think the final count is 22), Edith finally comes to her senses and leaves Dewey when she finds him in bed with his new wife Darlene (Jenna Fischer), whom he married just because he wanted to sleep with her.

Dewey, depressed and unlucky in love, spends time in jail and then rehab. Neither helps because he just goes right back on the drugs when he spends some time in India tripping on LSD with the Beatles.

Side note: Jack Black is the worst Paul McCartney I’ve ever seen. Even if he isn’t trying to really be Paul, it doesn’t work. On the other hand, Adam Sandburg does the most impeccable George Harrison impression I’ve ever seen. Though, really, how many George Harrison impressions have I seen? Back to the story.

So! After his LSD trip, Dewey makes some horrible music, loses Darlene and his band mates, and gives up on music all together. Eventually, when he’s 71, we come back to the present, and see him perform his farewell song.

For the most part, Walk Hard is hilarious. The songs are catchy and the best written jokes in the entire movie. Edith’s insistence that Dewey will never make it, even though he’s got hit after hit, is funny. Remembering that Wiig and Reilly are playing teenagers is hilarious.

And there’s Tim Meadows. No matter if it a great joke or a crappy one, his delivery made me laugh out loud every time.

There are some overly cheesy, on-the-nose moments that work only because of the actors. Then there are some overly cheesy, on-the-nose moments that fall so flat that I can’t believe they stayed off the cutting room floor. I have the same feelings about the jokes. It’s really OK to have a couple of running jokes through your movie, but there is such thing as overkill. Pa Cox’s (Raymond J. Barry) favorite thing to say is, “The wrong kid died,” but after about the sixth time he utters it, I’m over it. The same goes for Dewey constantly pulling sinks out of the wall. Really, it’s only funny twice.

John C. Reilly, as always, is amazing. Even when the material is sub par, he seems to make it work. Jenna Fischer blows me away. I’ve always loved her as Pam on "The Office," but I’ve never seen her like this. She plays the seemingly innocent sex kitten Darlene to a tee.

The music is wonderful. Each song is catchy and littered with innuendo or a set up for a later joke. The best song is “Let’s Duet” with Dewey and Darlene. It’s sophomoric, yes, but it’s still damn entertaining.

The cameos read like a SNL call sheet crossed with Judd Apatow’s favorites sprinkled with a little Christopher Guest regulars. Everyone from Jonah Hill to Jayne Lynch to Frankie Muniz is in this movie. So if you’ve gotten to a part where it starts to lag, play the “who is that guy” game and you can keep yourself entertained until the movie’s funny again.

Even though I enjoyed Walk Hard, my biggest complaint is that it isn’t consistent. When it’s funny, it’s friggin’ hilarious. When it’s not, I’m checking my watch.

Nick and Norah

When I come here to write a blog, I usually spend days trying to figure out what I'm going to say. I approach this as if I'm writing for a magazine or newspaper when really, I'm writing for me and a bunch of people who love movies. I know this, but I still take time to set it up and rewrite it. Once in a while, I see a movie that throws all those formalities out the window. I just sit down and start typing. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist is one of those movies.

It is not the best movie I've seen this year, but it's truly the first movie this year that reminded me why I not only love watching movies, but love the whole idea of creating. It's such a simple story about the complication of love and relationships. It's little bits of every experience you've had just in settings you've never found yourself. It reminds me of all the good 80s movies that I find comfortable.

Nick (Michael Cera) is a bassist in a band who's completely hung up on his ex-girlfriend. He makes her mix CDs which she never listens to, but he keeps on trying to win her back. In an attempt to pull him out of his funk, his band mates take him out to play a gig and find his favorite band Where's Fluffy.

Norah (Kat Dennings) is the plain girl with the famous dad. Her best friend Caroline (Ari Graynor) depends on her for everything, and the pretty girl Tris (Alexis Dziena) is a complete bitch to her all the time. Little does Norah know that Tris' ex is Nick, and she's in love with his mix CDs.

This movie is about how two people with nothing in common but the love of a band find each other, lose each other, and then really find each other in one very long, very amazing night.

I think what makes this movie so comfortable and enjoyable are the lead actors. Michael Cera and Kat Dennings both play the plain kid well. You root for them, you feel for them, and you know them like they're your best friends. Oh, and they have incredible chemistry.

The supporting cast ain't too shabby either. Norah's best friend Caroline is a fall down drunk, but she provides a good majority of the comic relief. Think Penelope Ann Miller in Adventures in Babysitting. (If you haven't seen Adventures, please rent it now.)

Nick's gay bandmates, Thom (Aaron Yoo) and Dev (Rafi Gavron) are wonderful. (I have to mention that they are gay because everyone else brings it up every five minutes.) Thom and Dev are Nick's conscience, attempting to point him in the right direction and always (well, almost always) there to pull him back to himself.

With the offbeat supporting players and the down-to-earth leads, Nick and Norah is a quirky romantic story about teenagers on the cusp of adulthood crossing paths and having a crazy time doing it.

Real people don't have nights like these. Real people don't figure out the meaning of love and all that in one crazy night in New York City, but real people in the movies do. And that's why we all go see these stories play out on the big screen. Because sometimes we need to see the hyper-reality instead of the reality. Sometimes we need a feel good, comfortable, love story that's simple, sweet, and really good.

Don, the Traitor

It is not a secret that I love Don Cheadle, so I may be a little biased in saying that Traitor was a great movie. But I don't care because Traitor was a great movie. It's a little like The Departed meets Muslim extremist. Some people might consider this a bad combination, but with an actor as good a Cheadle in the lead, it worked for me. Here's a little tip that might throw you, Steve Martin (yep, that one) came up with the story while shooting Bringing Down the House. Let me just say, bravo Steve on a compelling story.

Cheadle is Samir Horn, a devout Muslim who was born in Sudan, raised in Chicago and is a former US Army Special Forces expert. The film starts with a young Samir praying with his father. When tragedy strikes, we jump ahead to present-day Samir in Yemin selling explosives to a terrorists group. Huh, go figure.


When he gets caught by Yemin officers and an FBI task force, he spends time in a Yemeni prison where he befriends Omar (Saïd Taghmaoui), a ringleader of a terrorist group. When Omar takes Samir with him as they escape prison, Samir becomes part of the group's ever-escalating terror plots all over Europe and soon to American soil. The thing is, you're wondering the whole time if Samir is just an American spy trying to get the bad guys, or is he now rogue and playing for the other team?

This whole time two FBI agents are following him around the world--Agents Clayton and Archer (Guy Pierce and Neal McDonough). Agent Clayton is an empathetic one who was raised a good Christian boy but went against the grain when he studied Arabic in school. Archer is the aggressive one who thinks with his fists and doesn't believe in a gray area. Yes, they're sort of stereotyped, but they're not in the movie enough for me to care too much.

With the good guys--the FBI--and the bad guys--the terrorist--pitted against one another. Traitor seems like a movie that could quickly fall into the black hats vs. the white hats kind of movie. Omar definitely talks about his hatred and why he believes Americans should die in bombings. Archer definitely talks about how much damage these men have done and could do to the American way. But Samir is always their with his faith.

He questions every motive, every idea by bringing it back to God and morality. Samir's message never waivers: bad things happen in this world, but we are not here to be the judges of who is right and who is wrong. With such a strong character in Samir, Traitor moves away from being a run-of-the-mill extremist against Americans movie and becomes a morality tale for both sides.

There are people who will be bothered by this idea of both the good guys and the bad guys having some of the same traits, but isn't it true? It's never over-emphasized, and the terrorists definitely are the bad guys in the movie, but they're not faceless drones.

Besides being a movie about the current political/social issues in this world, Traitor is also a good thriller with some terribly disturbing moments. I don't mean disturbing with blood and gore and all that. I mean getting under your skin and making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The idea that a man with such a strong faith in God would put himself in these situations--risking all that he has and knows to do what he believes is right, and the idea of extremists sympathizers infiltrating our lives just waiting for the moment when they can destroy us...it definitely gets under your skin.

This isn't really the type of movie that you enjoy per say, but I did think it was a terrific movie that will have you talking...and maybe not necessarily about war and terror.