‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’: Toronto Review

Dir: Eric Appel. US. 2022. 108mins

“Weird Al” Yankovic’s talent is his ability to parody popular songs, reimagining indelible melodies through funny new lyrics, turning the familiar into something silly and fresh. The impishly ambitious Weird: The Al Yankovic Story pays tribute to the 62-year-old musician by applying the same approach to the conventions of the rock biopic. Anybody watching this comedy expecting anything close to the truth about Yankovic’s life will be sorely disappointed — in this heavily fabricated tale, starring Daniel Radcliffe, both Pablo Escobar and Madonna inexplicably play prominent roles — and for a while the film has a blast mocking the genre’s most formulaic conventions. But unlike Yankovic’s best songs, Weird’s inspired goofiness eventually runs out of gas, growing more and more outrageous without coming up with comparably choice gags.

Ends up feeling less about what makes Yankovic so special and more a generic parody of Hollywood excess

Opening Toronto’s Midnight Madness section, Weird will play on the Roku Channel from November 4. Yankovic’s fans should be intrigued, and so will those who have enjoyed Radcliffe’s wilfully idiosyncratic post-Potter career. (Happily, Radcliffe makes for an amusing “Weird Al,” although Yankovic does his own singing in the film.) Very much a niche proposition, Weird is a Funny Or Die production and, like much of the company’s comedy output, it’s a hit-or-miss effort.

The film purports to be Yankovic’s somber reflections on his life — Diedrich Bader provides voiceover, billed as the Grizzled Narrator — with early scenes illustrating how young Al’s (Richard Aaron Anderson) boyhood dream of writing parody songs was shot down by his mean blue-collar father Nick (Toby Huss). But in adulthood, and now portrayed by Radcliffe, Yankovic follows his heart, coming up with smashes like ‘My Bologna’ and ‘I Love Rocky Road.’ Soon, stardom beckons — as well as Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), who seduces Yankovic so he’ll write parodies of her songs, thereby making them even more popular.

Expanding on his three-minute 2010 short, director and co-writer Eric Appel revels in the material’s irreverence, aided and abetted by co-writer Yankovic. Not just a spoof of rock films’ self-importance and predictable rise-then-fall storylines, Weird also lampoons 1980s action flicks and biopics in general. Above all, the picture (Appel’s feature directorial debut after years of helming sitcoms) gleefully milks the irony of juxtaposing the seriousness of those genres with Yankovic’s lovably nerdy, ultra-enthusiastic music and persona. 

In its opening stretches, the film (which is chock-full of cameos from hip comedians like Patton Oswalt and Paul F. Tompkins) is funny in the same way that Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story was, pointing out the absurdity of every rock-film cliche. (For instance, we witness the fledgling parody performer have his exultant aha! moment when he comes up with ‘My Bologna,’ the clearly fabricated sequence underlining the narrative trope’s ridiculousness.) Throughout, Radcliffe deftly underplays the comedic set pieces, positioning Yankovic as just one more kid with a crazy dream to make it in the music industry. It helps, of course, that Yankovic’s classic songs remain so endearingly dopey. Honestly, who can resist learning the (fake) backstory to how ‘Another One Rides The Bus’ was written?

Unfortunately, Weird stumbles as it goes along, expanding its scope once Yankovic experiences the perils of celebrity. Wood does a convincing Madonna impression, but the character is a one-note caricature, and when the filmmakers include some international intrigue involving drug cartels and high-octane action sequences, Weird starts to lose its inventive spark. The joke, of course, is that clearly none of these bombastic adventures actually happened to “Weird Al” Yankovic, but the image of Radcliffe as Al brandishing a machine gun proves not to be as hilarious as one might hope. 

Still, those with an affinity for Yankovic — not just his songs but his self-effacing demeanour and penchant for weirdo humour — will appreciate how Weird captures his essence. Naturally, celebrated figures in his orbit such as Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson), an influence and early champion, put in an appearance, but it’s really the film’s oddball comedic sense in which Weird celebrates Yankovic’s legacy. Like the man himself, Weird is in thrall to pop-culture ephemera, obsessively cataloguing and referencing every scrap of media consumed, recreating it in a new package. But as the film morphs into an extravagant sendup of action films, Weird ends up feeling less about what makes Yankovic so special and more a generic parody of Hollywood excess. Great “Weird Al” songs don’t make that mistake: it’s their specificity and distinct personality that have helped them endure.