Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Legendary rock n roll rebel Cox gets the biopic treatment he surely deserves courtesy of writer-director Jake Kasdan and writer-producer Judd Apatow.

It kicks off in time-honoured fashion with Cox on the point of receiving a lifetime achievement award, then flashes back to the infamous childhood machete trauma that forever alienated him from his father but which set him on his rocky road to musical superstardom.

Echoes of recent movies about Dewey's near-contemporaries, Ray Charles and Johnny Cash (Ray and Walk The Line) are probably inevitable:

Like Charles, Cox overcame disability and discrimination (he went smell-blind after his brother's unfortunate accident). Like both of them, he was a southern farm boy who instinctively got the blues, who blundered into an early marriage (he was 15) but would later fall in love with another singer. All three men waged long battles with drug addiction. For Cox, that included cocaine, amphetamines and LSD - a gift from the Beatles.

If he emerges as a prodigious but volatile, troubled, tight-fisted, and narcissistic talent, that's probably not too far from the truth - after all, this is a man who abandoned his many children but kept a pet monkey close to him. Not that we should overlook his mid-60s protest period, when he did so much for "the little man" (dwarves especially).

If you're still wondering why you've never heard of Dewey Cox, well, you should probably consider the first words of the script: "Mr Cox! Mr Cox! Mr Cox! I need Cox�"

Yup. This is the same Judd Apatow who gave us The 40 Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad. He's not one to shy from a dick joke, not by a long stroke. A slap-happy spoof of the aforementioned musical biopics, Walk Hard may boast the most gratuitous example of full frontal male nudity ever to crop up in a mainstream Hollywood movie.

That part apart, it treads mighty familiar ground. The Rutles, This is Spinal Tap, and A Mighty Wind all come to mind, though at least Kasdan doesn't stoop to mockumentary. Even so, the film feels more like a prolonged skit than a real movie. It's closer to Scary Movie style hijinks than anything else in the Apatow canon - except (major distinction) it's regularly funny.

An agreeable character actor who played second banana to Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights and Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights, smudge-faced John C Reilly is goofily game in a rare solo lead, aging from 14 to 70, and parodying everyone from Cash to Buddy Holly, Roy Orbisson, Elvis, Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson. He can sing, curl a mean lip and swivel his hips too.

The song parodies are so consistently on the money you might be tempted to buy the soundtrack, but the stuff in between is patchier and somewhat repetitive. If you haven't seen Walk the Line a lot of it will be wasted.

Several cameos (some of them uncredited) add to the fun: Eddie Veder, Jackson Browne and Lyle Lovett play themselves. Harold Ramis is a Jewish industry maven. Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman try on their Mersey accents as an unlikely Fab Four.

It's no knockout smash, but more hit than miss.

Tom Charity
tom.charity@lovefilm.com