Before heading to the Toronto International Film Festival, where I knew I would be watching Weird: The Al Yankovic Story—the Weird Al movie starring Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al—I did my research by watching Weird Al’s Behind the Music.
The episode is so charming mainly because of how the parody songwriter-slash-accordionist fails to fit into the classic rock-star mold. Whereas most installments of the VH1 series are laden with drama and drug use, Weird Al’s is about a smart boy who loved dorky comedy and somehow miraculously made an entire career out of it.
Weird, co-written by Yankovic and director Eric Appel, is not that story. It’s essentially a Weird Al parody of a biopic that happens to be about Weird Al. But in recasting Weird Al as a troubled genius with demons aplenty, it loses the absolute charm of its subject and creator. Sure, it’s clever at first, but after a while it starts to feel like you’re watching yet another tiresome biopic that hits the same beats as every other biopic—except this one is supposed to be fake and funny.
Yes, there’s the former Harry Potter in a curly wig baring his (shockingly) ripped chest in an open Hawaiian shirt. And, yes, there are cameos aplenty, some more delightful than others. But the conceit of “What If Al Yankovic Was Actually a Jerk” is not strong enough to carry a movie that lasts nearly an hour and 40 minutes, and the laughs never really amount to more than a chuckle.
In the weird Weird version of Yankovic’s story, Yankovic comes from a family where the idea of writing silly new lyrics to preexisting songs is shunned by his father (the hilarious Toby Huss), who wants him to work in his factory. (What does the factory make? Don’t worry about it. All you need to know is that people get maimed.)
When an accordion salesman (actual Al friend Thomas Lennon) comes to the door, the young Al is captivated by the instrument, but his dad beats the shit out of the peddler. His mother (Julianne Nicholson, always wonderful) buys it for him to play in secret. A scene where Al lets his talents loose at a teenage polka party is particularly inspired. These early scenes are where Appel finds the best alchemy of homage and playful skewering, but even then he's competing with the masterpiece of fake rock biopics, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.
By the time Radcliffe takes over playing Al, his ascension to fame is quick. He improvises the words to his “My Sharona” knock off “My Bologna” while making sandwiches for his dopey roommates. He’s taken under the wing of his idol Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson)—a real person who influenced Yankovic’s career, if you didn’t know—who invites him over to his house for a soiree that’s like the pool bash scene in Boogie Nights, if it were populated by a bunch of famous people playing slightly more niche famous people. (Think: Conan O’Brien as Andy Warhol; Jack Black as Wolfman Jack.)
By the time Evan Rachel Wood enters as her gum-popping version of Madonna, the movie spirals off the rails. It’s not that Wood’s impression is not good. She’s clearly having a great time emulating the pop star’s put-on quasi Brooklynese, but the fictional spin on Madonna is uncomfortably retrograde. Framing the pioneering musician as a money grubber who seduces Al so he’ll parody one of her songs and make her even more famous just starts to feel icky the longer it goes on. It eventually takes up the back half of the runtime.
Weird isn’t quite savvy enough to actually comment on the trope of the femme fatale bringing down a talented man, so instead the joke becomes, “Wasn’t Madonna horny and fame hungry?”
There’s a similar issue that works against Radcliffe’s go for broke performance as Al himself. The screenplay never finds a personality for this Weird Al beyond the stereotypes that it’s making fun of. You start to long for the real, sweetly nerdy Al instead of this alternate universe version you're watching. Radcliffe is basically playing Jim Morrison in oversized glasses—nothing resembling the actual reason you’re probably watching this in the first place.
Weird Al’s whole deal works because it’s unrepentantly goofy. There’s no commentary in replacing the lyrics to “Beat It” with “Eat It” or making a version of “American Pie” about the Star Wars prequels. Weird, which will eventually premiere on the Roku Channel, gets too bogged down in the genre it’s spoofing that it forgets to be light and random. In short: It's just not weird enough.
