Weird Al: An Interestingly Absurd Parody

Roku’s musical biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” is an amusing parody of its genre.

Intro

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a parody of a musical biopic about the parody song artist Weird Al. This movie stars Daniel Radcliffe in the titular role as Al Yankovic, Evan Rachael Wood, Rainn Wilson, and many other A-list celebrities in cameo roles round out the rest of the cast. Yankovic co-wrote this script with Eric Appel, who also directed the film. For some reason, this film was released to the streaming service The Roku Channel, which is popular but has yet to reach the mainstream platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, or HBO Max. Despite this, the parody movie has been met with positive reception from critics and audiences and is widely regarded as hilarious.

Witty And Fun

This movie utilizes heavy satire in the majority of its scenes, and it’s easy to tell that it is poking fun at recent musical biopics such as Elvis (2022), Rocketman (2019), and Bohemian Rhapsody (2018). While Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) follows the same format as these movies highlighting how the artist got his start and the highs and lows of his career and life, it does so in a very over-the-top manner, marking it as a parody. Whether it be over-the-top performances from the actors, completely unrealistic scenes, or just pretending lies that everyone knows our truth, humor is etched into every aspect of this movie. If you plan to watch this film, prepare to be laughing the entire time.

Star Of The Show

Besides the humor, another commendable aspect of this movie is the acting—especially by Daniel Radcliffe. Radcliffe is most well known for his role as Harry Potter from 2000-2011. Most people probably couldn’t name a single movie he has been in besides Harry Potter. But Radcliffe puts on a spectacular performance as Weird Al in this film, a role which will likely be remembered in the future. He over-acts in some scenes, but that’s entirely the point, as this film is over-the-top to serve humor to its audiences. The other actors in this film can’t compete with Radcliffe, but their status as A-listers often makes their roles funny. Jack Black as Wolfman Jack, David Dastmalchian as John Deacon, Conan O’Brien as Andy Warhol, and Lin-Manuel Miranda as a random doctor all cause laughs when they appear. Not to mention Al himself cameoing as a disgruntled producer turning down his character’s songs, adding a meta layer that makes the film even funnier.

Closing Critiques

Although this movie is hilarious, is led by a strong performance, and has many celebrity cameos, it doesn’t have anything else going for it. Sure, it’s interesting to see how Al came up with the ideas for his parodies, but since the movie itself is a parody, it’s unclear whether any of those scenes are true. You will enjoy this film if you are a big fan of Weird Al and his parodies. A casual viewer will be able to have some laughs at it as well. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story smartly and hilariously satirizes the musical biopic genre with some incredible acting, but the film is mostly lacking in other departments to make this a good movie.

Raving Rating: 6.7