On paper, the Weird Al movie sounds like an antidote to the rote biopics and documentaries about celebrities that now flood theaters and streaming services year after year. Lax on facts in a way that suits its subject's improbable fame, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story poses clever questions: What if the master of pop parody wasn’t some niche curiosity? What if he'd become the biggest rock star in the world? What if Michael Jackson's "Beat It" had imitated Weird Al's "Eat It," instead of the other way around?
Fun stuff, in theory. In practice, not so much. Weird, which Yankovic co-wrote with director Eric Appel (Funny or Die, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), lacks the zany laughs of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which more effectively spoofed biopic conventions in 2007. Here, finally, is a celebrity whose anomalous career deserves a legitimate movie, however goofy that movie should be. Instead, we get hyperbole that coasts on one repetitive gag—never more inflated or annoying than during an overextended segment in which Weird Al, played by Daniel Radcliffe, dates a Machiavellian nympho version of Madonna.
This particular Madonna (a gum-popping Evan Rachel Wood, having a ball with her feigned Brooklyn inflections) learns of the "Weird Al bump"—a phenomenon that supposedly benefits the repute of any singer he parodies—on a news broadcast. Hungry for her own slice of Yancovician shine, she appears at his front door wearing her ’80s signatures, specifically the bangles, black lace gloves, and teased-out hair from "Lucky Star" and the wedding dress from "Like a Virgin." Within minutes, Madonna is undressing Al on a couch, initiating the volcanic encounter one might expect from the author of a book called Sex.
It's a solid joke, at first. Presenting Madonna as a fame-chasing steamroller who knows a shrewd business move when she sees one isn't far from the truth, and Wood ratchets up her coquettishness to an outrageous degree. But, as the movie slips further from reality, what could have been a memorable cameo turns into a crucial subplot. The gag goes from winking and satirical to actively anti-Madonna.
Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson), a syndicated radio personality who helped give Weird Al his start, describes her as an "evil, conniving succubus," and the movie backs him up: She courts Al strictly for self-gain, insists he perform instead of seeking necessary medical attention, plies him with alcohol as he develops unruly drinking habits, and conspires to take over Pablo Escobar's Colombian drug empire with Al as her No. 2.
The problem is not that these events are apocryphal. They're too ludicrous to take at face value anyway. Plus, biopics misrepresent details for narrative purposes all the time.
Some make them up entirely. Blonde, the polarizing Marilyn Monroe psychodrama that debuted on Netflix in September, is so heavily fictionalized it can't be labeled a biopic. (The film is based on a Joyce Carol Oates novel that blends fact, speculation, and outright invention, as is a novelist's right.)
Last year's mesmerizing Spencer, starring Kristen Stewart as a troubled Princess Diana, imagines the British royal family's chilly Christmas celebrations from 1991, a private gathering that leaves ample room for conjecture. In 2007, the impressionistic I'm Not There told Bob Dylan's life story using six distinct characters inspired by the folk singer's evolving personas.
Those movies' tactics made sense. So much fodder exists about Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, and Bob Dylan; why dramatize what we already know? The same could be said of Madonna, if only Weird didn't reduce her to a one-note farce bordering on sexism. Despite—or because of—her popularity, it has always been trendy to hate Madonna (see: The I Hate Madonna Handbook, an actual book published in 1994), and deeming her a narcissistic vampire is the laziest put-down out there. It's especially tired in a movie about a guy who got rich by tweaking words that other people wrote.
During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Yankovic said he's only met Madonna briefly. "I talked to her for maybe like 45 seconds backstage, so that’s the extent of the relationship," he explained. Not even his "Like a Virgin" parody was Yankovic's idea. In fact, it was Madonna's—and probably not because she thought she needed his "bump."
According to Yankovic himself, Madonna one day wondered "when Weird Al is gonna do 'Like a Surgeon.'" She was talking to a friend of his manager, Jay Levey, while strolling through New York. After the comment got back to Yankovic, he did something he otherwise avoids: accepted another performer's suggestion. "I was like, 'Good idea, Madonna. Thanks,'" he told The New York Post in 2011. "Like a Surgeon" became one of his best-known songs.
This would be an interesting tidbit to include in a biopic about someone who has an undeniably interesting claim to fame! (As we see it, "Surgeon" comes to Weird Al while he's hospitalized.) Instead, Wood's Madonna is subjected to a half-witted saga involving the most notorious cocaine kingpin this side of El Chapo. It's an aimless way to caricature the queen of pop's world dominance, a quest Weird portrays as deceitful and vapid for no clear reason other than to stretch a joke past its breaking point.
If the celebrity-biopic craze weren't oversaturated, maybe Appel and Yankovic wouldn't have felt the need to go so arch with theirs. The genre that has recently netted Oscars for Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye), Renée Zellweger (Judy), Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody), and Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)—and could soon do the same for the likes of Austin Butler (Elvis) and Ana de Armas (Blonde)—is ripe for disruption. But subverting what's familiar requires perspective, and Weird has little.
If you want to know who Weird Al and Madonna really are, you won't find answers here. As one of history's most scrutinized superstars, Madonna is certainly worthy of a quality roasting here and there. Unfortunately, painting her as a vulture feels as uninspired as everything else this movie has to offer.
