Free Great Movies Review
Fans of Weird Al Yankovic have to see the new music biopic parody film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story! In this age of terribly conventional music biopics (e.g. Bohemian Rhapsody), Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a satire of so many of the conventions that make music biopics unbearable. The movie starts out hilarious right of out of the gate with Yankovic's ridiculously strained relationship with his parents. In maybe the high point of the movie Al enters an over-the-top illicit polka party where he shows off his accordion skills. Al's father freaks out in dramatic fashion when he gets home and smashes his accordion. The laughs keep coming when Al goes to college, and from then Al is played by Daniel Radcliffe, who does an excellent job of conveying Weird Al's manic energy. His three over-supportive college roommates cheer him on as he comes up with his first hit "My Bologna" when hearing "My Sharona" on the radio. The hits keep coming as he attends an all star celebrity party that is a homage to the Boogie Nights pool party scene, and features a lot of great cameos. The biopic takes us into Weird Al's fictitious drug & alcohol abuse phase in the 1980s and Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) shows up as a bad influence. One standout scene involves a shirtless Daniel Radcliffe putting on his best Jim Morrison impression as he drinks heavily and hurls insults at the audience. The music biopic satire gets a little off track with a mission to kill Pablo Escobar, but ends in high comedic fashion all the way through the closing credits. Never for a moment serious, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is definitely a great companion movie to Weird Al's 1989 cult comedy classic UHF.