Al Yankovic's biography gets Weird!
A movie that when the trailer was released, had my attention immediately. Al Yankovic is a musician that I absolutely loved when I was growing up. From his parody songs to just being a cool dude, I found his career very interesting and this movie kind of hits on that weird path he had to take. This movie can only be streamed on the Roku Channel. Let's review.
Al Yankovic also known as "Weird Al", had people eating out of the palm of his hands by making parody songs to popular hits. Some of his famous hits were "I Love Rocky Road", "Eat It", "White and Nerdy", "Yoda", and so much more. Weird Al starts his career off by making parody songs which are songs that are essentially the same but with different words. As an example, Weird Al has a song titled "Eat It" which is a parody of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" song. If you haven't listened to Weird Al, I highly recommend it!
The biography starts off with young Al and his family and you learn early on that his family isn't the best to him. Now, when I first started this film I thought this would be somewhat true and while it is, most of it is just made up and fabricated. I call it a mock-umentary because like parody songs, this movie has some real but mostly made up things. This movie has a ton of names that you will recognize like:
Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al
Lin-Manuel Miranda as a doctor
Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento
Patton Oswalt as a heckler
Akiva Schaffer as Alice Cooper
Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol
Jack Black as Wolfman Jack
Al Yakovic as Tony Scotti
As you see, this movie has some big names but I have to give it up to Daniel Radcliffe who played a great younger Weird Al. He was funny, emotional and really delivered on his lines! Each actor has their moments and that gave the movie the lift I believe it needed.
This film takes place around Weird Al's mid 20's I believe so you really see the wild side of him and what he went through to make it big time! From women to alcohol and drugs, Weird Al was in the thick of things while making parody songs that the world grew to love! He went to parties and made up songs on the spot just to show that he knew what he was doing! I think what made me enjoy this movie was the fact that it was that dumb comedy that just makes you shake your head and laugh at. I am a sucker for movies like that and so I was all in for it!
Now, as much as I laughed and shook my head doing so I did have some things that I would've changed. One things is that I had no clue, well in some instances I knew but I had no clue what was real and what was fake! Some scenes I knew it was fake and made up but others, like his childhood or even when he first started out as a musician I have no clue if that really happened or not! Another things is the length of the film. Weird sat at 1 hour and 48 minuets long which in my opinion is 20-30 minuets too long. If they cut some scenes out and focused on an actual biography then I think that would've been perfect! However, you've got to look at who this movie was about and his style of work which is parodies and changing the norm, so I understand it.
Overall, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is one of those films that you can turn on and just watch a stupid, funny comedy that has a great soundtrack and talks about a musician that changed the world! Weird: The Al Yankovic Story gets a 7/10 from me!