I watched it last night, and same with me. The jokes were not coming thick and fast, so some of the dramatic moments were overplayed for their seriousness, but that was the joke, which isn’t something you laugh at so much as appreciate the style parody. Also I wondered too often which parts were sort-of-true.
Mrs. solost and I enjoyed it.
I was going to make a joke here about being angry with how inaccurate biopics often are, and cite very minor inaccuracies as if the whole thing wasn’t a parody. So I looked up Weird Al’s life story on Wikipedia to get some facts to construct my joke post, and instead was surprised to find out that, as ridiculous a parody as it was, many of the main story points actually happened in a very similar way:
- Al’s mother did forbid him to listen to the Dr.Demento show as a kid, so he had to listen surreptitiously.
- A traveling salesman really did turn him on to the accordion. Although, he was selling subscriptions to music lessons, not actual accordions.
- He really did record “My Bologna” in a public bathroom.
- He didn’t make up “Another One Rides the Bus” on the spot at a Dr. Demento party, but he did record it live on the Dr.’s show, after rehearsing it only a couple times, and the drummer did keep time by banging on Al’s accordion case.
- Al really was a top-level assassin in the 80s, taking out many Columbian cartel members. “Party in the CIA” is autobiographical.
Weird Al’s first nationwide TV appearance was on the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder. He performed Another One Rides the Bus with Bermuda Schwartz keeping time on the accordion case.
This was well known on the CIA assassin newsgroup.
“All The News Worth Killing Over”
I saw the movie today and enjoyed it. (I was sitting there trying to identify the actors in the party scene.)
His parents WERE very strict, that part is true; however, they were strict in a sort of helicopter parent way. They were very supportive and loving.
Obviously, the one entirely true point is that “Eat It” was an original song, which Michael Jackson parodied.
My favorite true Weird Al fact though is this:
“Fat” won the Grammy Award for best concept music video.
The video for “Bad” wasn’t even nominated for a Grammy.
I finished watching it last night - started during an abortive platelet donation on release day (got through the LSD trip), then started again from the top so that SunWife could watch.
I knew this was going to be my kind of movie when the radio announced “30% off all gabardine suits” on the fade-in to the flashback. As an unabashed Al fan I spent a lot of time looking for similar Easter eggs to the point where I missed a lot of the celebrity cameos (though I should have spotted Lin-Manuel Miranda as the doctor from the get-go).
Even though Daniel Radcliffe doesn’t really have the physical stature to play Al, I thought he did a good job of bringing the parodied up-from-nothing-rock-star-jerk-redeemed sequence to life. I’m sure Al enjoyed doing the Scotti Brothers scenes as well - I loved it when Al’s dad said he shouldn’t have signed away the publication rights. All in all, I was glad they hit the high points of the original Funny Or Die trailer.
The Madonna/Escobar plot was a little overwrought - I wondered if it might have alluded to “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind” a bit - but if you can’t go over the top while providing some implicit commentary on music stars selling out to do events for the rich-and-morally-compromised, what else can you do?
It won’t be regarded as the Citizen Kane of musical celebrity biopic parodies (which is, of course, an extremely specific niche genre), but it gave me plenty of laughs.
I hear Al wanted to show Freddie Mercury at the pool party, but couldn’t get permission from his estate to use his image. John Deacon turned out to be a better choice since he actually wrote the song Another One Bites the Dust.
Yeah, it’s no Walk Hard, but it’s pretty good. (Assuming you’re counting fictional celebrities in your assessment.)