As much as I LOOOOVE Weird Al, I actually didn't want to see this. It looked like yet another bloated, mostly false and overly melodramatic rise/fall music band movie. I was dead wrong. This is now my official/unofficial favorite rock band movie.
Before the beginning, the real Weird Al asks us to enjoy his biographical movie. His true story, wink, wink. And as the movie opens, I started to question the happenings thinking: hey maybe some of this is true, some fabricated. As the movie progressed, I finally realized what it was and while it took a LONG time to get there, it was worth it.
Weird Al is a pure genius. If you like his music and him as an artist, like I do, you WILL like this movie. The jokes are incredibly safe, but then so is his music. That does NOT mean they're any less funny. I happened to laugh out loud quite a few times, even. And I do appreciate some of the humor was more controversial, and still technically safe with the material/time frame they're parodying. They kept me wondering which was humor and which was real and some of the jokes were played so straight. So straight, they said it like it was a fact and quickly carried on. I almost had to rewind it, but by the time I thought of that, they quickly brought it back up to all-but wink at the audience, or me in particular, that they were just jooooking.
This movie was a complete joy and all three leads: Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood and Rainn Wilson were all perfect. (The rest of the cast were great as well, especially the parodied celebrities.) This was refreshing for this niche subgenre. I was as vague as I could be up above and it'll do you good to go in as cold as possible.
I will say it's a tad too long as it builds up for a very long time and then seemingly climaxes for the end of the movie only to keep going for another 30 or so minutes. Unfortunately, it does loose steam a bit, though it still was engaging. I truly believe I will like this more with future viewings and just by simply thinking about it.
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Final Thoughts: I could write a short story on how much I love Weird Al and how much he's meant to me. Suffice to say, here are three quick stories: My favorite Weird Al song (and definite top 5 for my all-time list) is "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead." They used to play it at 7AM every Friday morning on a local radio station here in the 80s and so, it became a tradition for me for years carrying that on way into my adulthood. I even added his "Dare to be Stupid" to my Friday morning playlist. I don't play these songs so much anymore, and I've heard "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead" so many times, I barely can hear it when it does play on my random playlist.
Also, once when I was trying to win back an ex in 2003, I got us both two tickets to Weird Al's live show. While my ex really loved Weird Al, I only liked Weird Al some. That is, until this concert. LET ME TELL YOU, that was one of the best concerts I'd ever been to and I became a lifelong fan and admirer of Weird Al. My only gripe: Weird Al kept taking a ton of breaks for like 15+ minutes. On the flipside, on the big screens he showed clips of his TV segments entitled: "Al TV" whereas he uses real interview footage, slices in Weird Al as the interviewer asking fake questions and editing in "answers" from the celebrity. It was my first time ever hearing of this and I was in pain with how hard I laughed. ESPECIALLY the Eminem one.
And finally, I was in school choir I can't remember the year 1980s and the teacher selected our songs: "Eat it" and a couple of other Weird Al songs popular then. I loved it because I felt the teacher had an edge. I still have those music sheets the teacher handwrote out the lyrics, presumingly from the CD jacket and xeroxed copies for all of us.
