WEIRD: THE AL YANKOVIC STORY Movie Review **SPOILER ALERT**

[Music] without you [Music] that's Nick and that's Joseph and today we're here to talk about weird the Al Yankovic story which premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival in the Midnight Madness program where it won the People's Choice Award I can't imagine having to sit through this at midnight uh it is being released courtesy of the Roku Channel November 4th 2022. shout out to Roku because we have a Roku TV in our bedroom and I really like that setup so there's that okay I really wanted to like this movie I like Daniel Radcliffe I think he's a really interesting cute little guy um and I am a kid of the 80s so obviously I'm very familiar with the Weird Al so I was looking forward to this I think the casting alone made me think that this was going to be just this out of control crazy ass movie because Weird Al looks very different from uh Daniel Radcliffe and he's also much taller but and considering it was co-written by uh Weird Al and the director of this film Eric Apple uh who's her24 worked in television and this is technically his directorial debut for a theatrical release unfortunately I found this movie very hard to sit through I think I how many times did I say like I just wanted to turn it off like it was very very hard to sit well because it's purposefully being like a satire a parody of biopics so it's also done by the Funny or Die people and it feels exactly like that so it's not like I I don't understand what I thought satire meant like funny but it's what it's supposed to be but it's not funny it's like you just have all these really notable people pretending to be other people but there aren't really no jokes the only to me the only comedy writing is when we hear Weird Al songs because those songs are funny right the lyrics make you laugh those were the pretty much the only moments I laughed were when we hear eat it My Bologna um Amish Paradise Like a Surgeon Like a Surgeon those are the four songs we hear right [Music] um that's it and I laughed at those but other than that it was really really hard I mean we have Conan O'Brien wearing all shitty ass uh any Warhol wig and literally just sitting there like I'm Andy Warhol like okay but where's the joke like and Nina West is divine Quinta Brunson is Oprah Oprah and she I chuckled a couple times I did because she's doing it in Earnest but the problem is everyone's just like and then um we'll tell the basic story sure so it's basically like Weird Al as a kid and it sort of played like they're making he wants to play the accordion but they're making it like seem like he's gay so it's like something that he has to hide and his mom helps him get the accordion but says you can't let your dad see you the dad catches him gets upset so when Weird Al goes to college he gets with this group of friends and they say like you're free to like explore so he comes out of the closet as like this accordion player and then he writes a song My Malona submits it and they're like well dude no one becomes an overnight success and literally the next line is like the radio says that your song is an overnight success and then the rest of the movie is him being like the world's biggest pop star and the main storyline is that Madonna is dating Weird Al for the sole purpose of getting him to parody one of her songs because she knows that if he does her record sales will go up because everybody gets that Weird Al bump the Weird Al bump okay it's important to know that Pablo Escobar the the cartel leader is infatuated with Weird Al and kidnaps Madonna in an effort to lure Weird Al so then we get this moment where Weird Al has to save Madonna he does but in the process Pablo Escobar gets killed so then Madonna is now this big assumes the position of this cartel leader it's an eye patch and this now has an eye patch and a scar on her face and Weird Al has moved on he wins a Grammy and while he's giving his acceptance speech Madonna has her henchmen kill him and the final shot of the film is straight out of the movie Carrie where Madonna is that Weird Al's grave site and his zombie hand reaches up and grabs her oh yeah it's almost as if Mel Brooks had wanted to direct the Weird Al biopic uh with a template of the unbearable weight of massive Talent the Nicholas Cage so I guess if you're gonna do a movie about someone known for parodies and satire then I guess one direction to go would be to make the biopic a satire but then it's not funny but it's not it's not smart enough to really be a satire so then you could go the other route and make it like I was almost thinking it should be like the people versus Larry Flint like you know we made this dramatic piece about a smut Peddler why don't we make this dramatic piece about and to be fair Larry Flynn did break a lot of boundaries like uh changing legislation and freedom of speech or print or whatever freedom of the press but is that what he did I don't know now I sound stupid but anyway um like maybe Weird Al's uh uh impact on like parity laws or something but that's a good point because I thought that I was going to head in that direction as well because there was a recent Italian film about Eduardo Scarpetta from Mario Martini the king of laughter which is about the stage performer who's uh use of satire other popular plays changed the laws because various lawsuits so I think what yeah like this could have been really subversive if this would have been a dramatic piece about this silly person in entertainment who like really was successful but its major crime is just that it's just not funny but I don't know this one the People's Choice Award at midnight madness and I I assume that there is an audience there that will embrace it but I guess I wanted it at first I was I was just willing it to keep to delve deeper into this kind of Strangers With Candy that it has in the beginning right with Julianne Nicholson who just played Marilyn Monroe's mother as Weird Al's mom and Toby Huss who is also in blondes even though I said it wasn't I called him a different name uh and it's like sometimes it almost gets there it just it's not demented it's not demented enough which I think is what the strangers of the candy effect would have done and then I also because I always thought weird I was introduced to weirdo as a kid along with my first memories of pisadora Anna Nicole Smith uh Priscilla Presley and O.J Simpson in Naked Gun 33 and a third right uh so I guess I wish it had that kind of Naked Gun Vibe and again you know Mel Brooks when he was very very good was excellent but when Mel Brooks was not you know you get like silent movie so the opening of the film Weird Al like as a teenager his friends are like come to this party like you know you want to be cool right come to this party we're having and he's like I can't my parents won't let me leave the house at night and he's like well they're telling him do a hey boy and I'd never heard of a hey boy this is one thing that did make me laugh because we find out what a hey boy is it's basically like in his bed he's made like a fake body out of hay so that his parents think he's in bed I thought that was funny because I didn't know what it was but then it's just Overkill of how stupid it is because the party is a polka party and Weird Al or Al is like so scared like my parents will kill me if they find out I'm at a polka party which is obviously ridiculous it's harmless and then he starts playing the accordion all the kids love him but it's just like it's just this long gag that and and the other gag is in this is in a parallel universe where eat it came before beat it uh well the big plot point is that weird Al takes a turn where he's like I'm not doing anything that isn't original so then he goes to Weird Al's playing himself as a record executive and the first time Daniel Radcliffe goes to Weird Al as the record executive he's like this [ __ ] is garbage who's gonna pay for a silly version of a real song but then he goes back with Eden and says this is a hundred percent I mean they really [ __ ] hit it into the ground that this is an original song with original music original lyrics with Weird Al playing the record executive from a funny or die sketch that he did as well and they love it and then shortly thereafter we see that Michael Jackson has released beat it and copied Weird Al but the problem with they're presenting Weird Al like he's like the biggest pop star but then they also make comments about other artists being big like Mike so I just I did I didn't mind Evan Rachel what is Madonna I thought she did a pretty good Madonna impression it's just that none of the dialogue not none of it but almost all of her dialogue is really not funnier it's just like all these obvious things that are said that again there's no punch line there's no joke there's like a radio personality named Dr dementor oh yeah his mentor who's mentored by uh Rayne Wilson who's his mentor and helps you know get him started and then there's a scene where they have a meeting it's also because his rise to fame is like meteoric and very rapid it's like I'm very like the timeline of thing it's just none of it makes sense but there's a moment when Dr dementor shows up and slips LSD in Weird Al's lasagna so then we get a little Montage guacamole a guacamole sorry and he uh is tripping balls and even that wasn't that funny no and then you know they also make Madonna into this like [ __ ] succubus which is an odd choice I thought too but um another kind of funny scene is when Weird Al's dad wants him to just work in a factory even after he's become like the world's biggest star it has millions of dollars his dad is still like you're a disappointment I want you to work in the factory and the joke about the factory is no one knows what they make at the factory so finally when Weird Al decides like I want my dad to love me he takes a job at the factory and he doesn't know what he's doing so some guy ends up getting eaten alive by a machine I thought that was kind of funny it was okay but again they could have they could have drawn uh allusions to Andy warhol's Factory as well sure but and I also was expecting that scene with his with Toby Hess is the dad to be kind of like the John Boyd Ben Stiller scene in Zoolander then when Weird Al's reunited with his parents his mom has become like she's gained a lot of weight so they have like a fat suit on her and it's funny because she looks silly but then the joke is not there like so it's there but it I don't know what the joke was because she goes well clearly I've gained weight and he's like yeah but you still look great he's like no I'm fat no I'm fat and then it's like and then they're quiet but then it's like a thing that she's fat I don't understand I know but again and that to me was very like Deborah rush and there's the stepmom and Strangers With Candy and it it's like the tone is too all over the place and then it's just too I don't know I will say the final scene with the dad um is when because the mom in the beginning the mom explains to her young son that your dad has something from his past that I think is influencing why he's so hard on you so now at the end of the movie Weird Al asks his dad what is this thing mom mentioned that and then basically the Dad Reveals that he used to be an accordion player who wrote parody songs and that his dad wrote Amish Paradise so then we get a montage of like illustrations of when his dad was an Amish country but I actually thought was kind of cool and then that goes into Weird Al performing Amish Paradise and of course the songs like the lyrics are funny so I thought that was a nice little moment yeah and then Will Forte is on hand who I like Will Forte he usually cracks me up just by being there um I don't have anything else I just thought that this I mean it's so funny this movie is called weird because it is so weird I was so unsatisfied I know it's not weird it's well it's so weird that it's not funny is what I meant to say I don't but I don't think it can be justifiably called weird it's just goofy they're just silly I don't know it just feels like a two out wall a hundred minute gag yeah it it just it yeah I think it'd be more satisfying if you just uh get on YouTube and like shuffle through Weird Al's music videos yeah I get it I would have preferred to just hear more of his music yeah what would you give him and and besides Daniel gradcliffe looking like he's in a Halloween costume uh version of Weird Al but I would give it one and a half I would give it one and a half out of five anything else no hit the thanks button listen to our podcast bye foreign

Channel: Fish Jelly Film Reviews

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Length: 13min 26sec (806 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 03 2022