The crowd final night time on the Royal Alexandra Theatre, which the web tells me is the oldest often working reside theatrical venue on the continent, howled by means of nearly each minute of the midnight premiere of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. Now, I’m not right here to yuck anybody’s yum. One man’s “well, that was just plain stupid” can at all times be one other’s Dare to Be Stupid. But I’d gently counsel that there wasn’t lots Weird may have achieved to go away this viewers stone-faced. Here we had been, in spite of everything, on the first screening of TIFF’s famously rowdy Midnight Madness program in about three years. People got here with chuckles within the chamber. They laughed on the “strobe effects” warning earlier than the film. They had been completely all the way down to clown. And that would solely profit this formally unofficial, goofily fabricated model of the well-known tune parodist’s life story—a comedy that by no means stopped feeling like a three-minute sketch uncomfortably and unnecessarily expanded to just about two full hours.
In reality, Weird is precisely that. Its inspiration is a dozen-years-old faux trailer from Funny or Die, whose single joke was, “What if you plugged the clean-mouthed, clean-living polka maestro with the library of food-based Top 40 spoofs into a gritty, debaucherous, rock-and-roll biopic?” The actual Yankovic has, in reality, lived a a lot eventful life, marked by sudden tragedy, a number of authorized dustups, and almost half a century of labor within the overlapping music and comedy worlds. Pretty a lot none of that makes it into Weird, which Yankovic and director Eric Appel—who collectively conceived of the unique viral video—as an alternative use as a chance to riff on among the moldy conventions of the music biopic. There is, roughly, only one joke on this expanded tackle the self-esteem, too, and that’s making a fictional actuality the place Yankovic (performed with a sure successful earnestness by Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe) turned the most important star on the planet.
And so right here’s a younger Al being struck with inspiration whereas looking at a bundle of bologna, commenting aloud that nobody really will get well-known in a single day (proper earlier than turning on the radio to find that he’s immediately well-known), and assembly a parade of fellow countercultural, comedy-nerd favorites like Dr. Demento, Wolfman Jack, and Pee-wee Herman, all performed by… fellow comedians winking at their very own impeccable good style in influences. Walk Hard obtained to loads of these things 15 years in the past, and with far more precision. (Why precisely is Weird narrated by the baritone trailer-voice man? Isn’t this imagined to be a lampoon of music biopics, not the commercials for music biopics?) Comparisons can be simpler to keep away from if Appel and Yankovic didn’t tread among the similar floor, blowing big stretches of the runtime on a subplot about Al’s disapproving dad.
Weird may have used extra of Yankovic’s distinctive wit, and fewer of the random sub-ZAZ materials that pads out its slim story.
Plenty of the true Yankovic’s healthful dork-vaudeville spirit seeps into the fabric by means of gags like a really Al model of the stereotypical wild teenage celebration (I did snicker, I’ll confess, at cool youngsters earnestly debating the deserves of polka deep cuts) and a normal willingness to be self-deprecating in regards to the distinctive area he’s carved within the pop-culture consciousness. No one may actually confuse Weird for self-flattery; that might require much more jokes hinging on precise particulars of his work or cultural footprint. The film doesn’t construct a lot on the unique Funny or Die technique of merely throwing glasses, a frizzy fro, and a brightly patterned shirt on the boilerplate of melodramatic Hollywood cautionary tales in regards to the music biz. It may have used extra of Yankovic’s distinctive wit, and fewer of the random sub-ZAZ materials that pads out its slim story, together with an entire superfluous goof on action-movie extra, related maybe just for clowning on the kind of testosterone fests that had been big within the heyday of “Like a Virgin” and “Like a Surgeon.” (Evan Rachel Wood capably takes over for Olivia Wilde because the queen of pop. For maybe apparent causes, Michael Jackson is just talked about, not portrayed.)
The normal laziness of the parody is a disgrace, and possibly a shock. For all Weird leans on only a handful of his hottest spoofs (this isn’t an particularly exhaustive love letter to the person’s legacy or his diehard followers), Yankovic has confirmed himself to be a sly, skillful parodist in his foremost medium, far past his novelty re-skins of pop hits; you possibly can hear his music smarts in his normal style pastiches and all-purpose artist parodies. Hear, for instance, “Germs,” a priceless—and compositionally subtle—Nine Inch Nails tribute that buddy, fellow critic, and Weird Al superfan Nick Allen turned me on to. Nick, by the way, lately ponied up for a backstage, artist-meet expertise on Yankovic’s tour that finally occurred with, for security causes, a thick plate of glass between him and Al. The signed image commemorating the assembly was the 2 posed individually after which photoshopped collectively. Afraid to say that’s funnier—and weirder—than absolutely anything in Weird.
Our protection of the Toronto International Film Festival continues all week. For extra of A.A. Dowd’s writing, please go to his Authory web page.
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