Weird The Al Yankovic Story (2022)
Directed by Eric Appel
Written by Weird Al, Eric Appel
Starring Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson, Toby Huss, Julianne Nicholson
Release Date September 8th, 2022 (Roku Channel)
Published November 11th, 2022
As a connoisseur of one Weird Al Yankovic, the idea of a traditional Weird Al biopic had me perplexed. Why would anyone make an earnest biopic of one of the strangest, most ironic, and comic careers in history. I was genuinely confused with what the makers of the movie Weird were all about. Then I saw the trailer and it all began to make sense. Weird is a Weird Al biopic but it is, far more importantly, a send up of the various silly tropes of rock biopics.
Biopics of rock stars seem to always go the same way. There is the rocket ride to stardom, struggling in the harsh light of fame, the inevitable fall from grace and then a rise once again or a death, one or the other. Biopics of rock stars do not tend to stray from this formula. Thus, the rock biopic genre is ripe for the kind of parody that Weird Al made famous with his music, an irreverent send up of the tropes combined with an over the top wackiness that is both hilarious and genuine.
Weird kicks off in a universe where Polka is the equivalent of gangsta rap, a genre of ill-repute in the white washed Reagan era. Here we meet Al as he is berated by his working class father, Nick (Toby Huss) and coddled by his loving mother, Mary. Al's life is changed forever when a door to door salesman (Thomas Lennon) comes to Al's door selling accordions. While Al is taken with the instrument, his father will not have this filthy equipment in his home and sets about beating the salesman to death with his bare hands.
In order to keep Nick out of jail for assault or attempted murder, Mary buys an accordion and gifts it to Al. This begins a life long love of the accordion and the start of his rocket rise to fame. Cut to college where Al is living with three friends and plays the accordion regularly. When challenged, Al invents a song on the spot, a parody of My Sharona called My Bologna. In an inspired sequence, Al is inspired for every single lyric by something he sees in the room around him.
Biopics love to give every aspect of every rock star life an origin story. Thus, Al having an origin story for even the most mundane or outlandish lyric is a great bit. Big laughs are spun from this scene and the following scene where Al and his friends go to a local bus station bathroom to record My Bologna. That's a true story, Al really did record the song in a bathroom and took it to a record company meeting on the same day. They turned him down just as they do in this movie.
Another inspired element comes when Al insists on writing original music only, only to then write his most famous songs, Eat It and Amish Paradise while calling them original songs. The meta of Michael Jackson calling Al for permission to write and perform Beat It, based on Al's Eat It, is another truly inspired gag. Throughout Weird, the movie finds wonderful little inventive ways to give Al a massive ego, something his fans know is certainly not a trait of Weird Al, arguably the most humble tunesmith in America.
This being a Rock N' Roll biopic, a love interest must be involved, a woman of ill-repute who follows our star down to the depths of his despair. That woman in Weird is Madonna played by Evan Rachel Wood. Sexually voracious and wildly talented, Madonna sets her sights on Al because of the supposed Al Bump, a spike in sales following an artist being parodied by Weird Al and his band. Madonna wants the sales bump and will do anything she can to get it.
Click here for my review of Weird at Geeks.media
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