Walk Hard-Dewey Cox Story (UMD for PSP) (2007)

Entertainment Weekly
"[The film] loves what it's sending up: the pleasure, ego, and sheer exhaustion of what happens behind the music." -- Grade: B 12/21/2007 p.58

Los Angeles Times
"[John C. Reilly is] on of the few serious dramatic actors who has a true gift for comedy. And he can sing, too, 15 monumental spoofs, as clever as they are melodic, that cover the musical waterfront from rockabilly to punk..." 12/21/2007

Empire
3 stars out of 5 -- "[A] scene with Cox meeting The Beatles is a delight..." 02/01/2008 p.47

Sight and Sound
"[W]hile it delivers belly laughs at the rate of AIRPLANE!, many scenes in WALK HARD have an undertone of real sentiment, owing much to the expert playing of John C. Reilly and co-stars Jenna Fischer and Kristen Wiig." 03/01/2008 p.86

ReelViews 7 of 10
If nothing else, at least it can be said that Walk Hard is not just another lame, humorless attempt at lampooning a popular genre. Perhaps due to the co-authorship of Judd Apatow or perhaps because Jake Kasdan aspires to be more than this generation's version of ZAZ (see: Airplane!, The Naked Gun), this film works better than the countless recent failures to come before it. That's not to say it's comedic brilliance. A lot of the jokes don't work. There are times when the movie spins its wheels. And the songs are rarely funny or clever enough. But there are laughs to be had and, perhaps surprisingly, I found myself caring a little about the character of Dewey Cox as the story develops. Sure, he's a walking collection of cobbled together cliches, but John C. Reilly provides him with a human quality that never gets lost amidst all the physical comedy and double entendres...Walk Hard is a disposable film that offers its share of small pleasures and amusements. It's not a great picture or even an especially good one but it can provide an alternative to the wave of serious dramatic movies that are rolling into multiplexes at this time of year...For those who enjoy the saturation style of humor and appreciate the way in which parody is not pushed too far into the absurd, Walk Hard is not without merit. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Apart from anything else demonstrated by "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," the movie shows that [John C. Reilly] can do plausible versions of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and on and on. He's like a kid who locked himself in his room singing along with his record collection and finally made it pay off...The movie is a spoof of rock-star biopics, most obviously "Walk the Line," which borrows the element of the wife at home and the affair with the backup singer on the road. There's also a lift from "Ray," who, you may remember, was blamed for letting his little brother drown. Dewey Cox is out in the barn playing with machetes with his own brother one day when he inadvertently slices him in half. Fatally? The doctor observes: "It's a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half"...The movie, directed by Jake Kasdan, was co-written by Kasdan and the productive Judd Apatow ("Superbad"), and they do an interesting thing: Instead of sending everything over the top at high energy, like "Top Secret" or "Airplane!," they allow Reilly to more or less actually play the character, so that, against all expectations, some scenes actually approach real sentiment. Reilly is required to walk a tightrope; is he suffering or kidding suffering, or kidding suffering about suffering? That we're not sure adds to the appeal. - Roger Ebert