Directed By Eric Appel

Starring – Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Jack Black

The Plot – Explores every facet of Yankovic’s (Radcliffe) life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like ‘Eat It’ and ‘Like a Surgeon’ to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle that shaped a generational icon of music celebrity.

The film is currently not rated

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Trailer #1 (2022) – YouTube

POSITIVES

This film’s single greatest strength is in its ability towards conjuring something freshly innovative to the music biopic subgenre, which are often riddled in redundancy in everything from formulaic predictability to historical inaccuracies. Here, Appel and Yankovic spoof the story in ways that similarly mimic the consistency of the latter’s musical catalog, with small instances of truth and familiarity used to grow something downright silly and even occasionally epic. It alludes to the irresponsibility and clumsiness of the very films they’re spoofing, but beyond that carves out an effectiveness for itself that does surprisingly make this an endearing experience, and one for the Roku channel that will inevitably put them on the map of reputable streaming services. A lot of this success rate lies in the film’s comedic material, poking fun in everything from the creative process of song writing to the alternate paths of historical relevancy, which steers the story down some occasionally dark and downright delirious paths of biographical inaccuracies. It certifies a fun experience, but beyond that one that refuses to ever take itself too seriously, instead reveling in the depths of the delirium over the fumbling of the facts that never seem even remotely relevant in a Weird Al Yankovic film. Aside from this, the heavy lifting of utility work from Radcliffe as the titular protagonist commands a committed performance that while anything but transformative, does elicit the charm and exuberance of the world’s greatest showman, producing energy in spades. While I feel it was an unfortunate miscalculation not to let Daniel do his own singing for the film, his razor-sharp timing for comedy more than makes up for the slight, showcasing intrigue in the respective second act of Daniel’s career that has helped him to elude typecasting. Aside from him, the film is equally blessed with an abundance of surprise cameos behind every corner, as well as a collective soundtrack capturing the biggest of Weird Al hits over a 45-year career. The tracks themselves are relived during some of Al’s most notable moments, albeit with sharply different and dramatically diverse directions, but when in tow with the alternate path of the timeline, help them to flourish unpredictability to the narrative in ways that make this iconic rise to fame feel freshly appealing like we’re experiencing it for the very first time, all the while perfecting the pivotal ingredients to making this a fun sit over an educational one.

NEGATIVES

Critiquing a Weird Al film seems a bit silly and irrational, but when the problems with the experience point towards compromising issues of creativity that take away from the film’s prominence, then I must grade it the same way as every other film I see. In this regard, the production values, as initially feared by a cheap looking trailer, never come close towards emulating the big screen appeal, with more than a few instances of obvious hinderances taking away from the appeal of the experience. The cinematography and overall aesthetic impulses are a bit bland, wasting away what could’ve been a beneficial personality in presentation that emulated and reflected the essence of its bizarre protagonist, with visual cues that could’ve taken some of the burden of responsibility from that of the often-precise material. Likewise, the small scales of events like the Grammy’s or stadium concerts are materialized with tight-knit camera compositions and an abundance of claustrophobic framing to often attempt suppressing the TV levels of scope that underwhelm the occasion, leaving this epic story feeling a bit more condensed than one would or should appreciate. Beyond this, the aforementioned decision to make Radcliffe lip-sync Weird Al vocals is a bit disconnecting to the integrity of the sequences, and even confrontational to the magnitude of Radcliffe’s own transformation. In my opinion, having an actor who sings the parts is always a better and far more impactful take towards the appeal of the performance, and failing to do so here only diminished why you would seek out an actor of Radcliffe’s caliber without pushing him to the limits of his comfort zone. Finally, while the 104-minute run time is earned in the depths of the traveled story, the pacing of such is a bit arduous during key scenes that doubled down on the time in depiction. There are plenty of examples, but the biggest offender is an early third act animated sequence with the backstory of Al’s father intending to flesh out his tightly wound personality, but instead drifting too far from the focus of the narrative for far too long, leaving it one of the many instances of pocketed plunders that probably should’ve been omitted all together from the finished product.

OVERALL
“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” is one of the absolute funniest, craziest, and most unconventional of music biopics in recent memory. Though the material and events depicted aren’t exactly factual, the film and its structure embrace the essence of Al’s off-beat personality and against the odds story, overcoming cheap production values and occasionally stilted pacing to solidify a film that above all else beats to its own drum, or accordion.

My Grade: 7/10 or B