| | | Life Made Him Tough. Love Made Him Strong. Music Made Him Hard.
Features: DVD, Unrated, Widescreen, Dolby Digital (5.1), English, Spanish, Subtitled, French
One of the most iconic figures in rock history, Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) had it all: the women (over 411 served), the friends (Elvis, The Beatles), and the rock 'n' roll lifestyle (a close and personal relationship with every pill and powder known to man). But most of all, he had the music that transformed a dimwitted country boy into the greatest American rock star who never lived. A wild and wicked send-up of every musical biopic ever made, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is gut-busting proof that when it comes to hard rocking, living and laughing, a hard man is good to find.
"This rowdy spoof of music biopics is silly fun and often hilarious." Claudia Puig, USA Today
"...the humor is so outrageous, the original music so much fun and Reilly so good...that it's irresistible." Jack Mathews, New York Daily News
"Smart and genial satire." Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
"A pitch-perfect musical comedy..." Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter
"...it zings along on perfectly pitched overstatement." Michael Sragow, Baltimore Sun
"For pure, uncomplicated enjoyment, it's the movie to see right now." Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle
"Not since "This is Spinal Tap" have I had such a good time watching amiable idiocy stumble on toward uncertain glory." Richard Schickel, Time
Editor's Note
Somewhere between pitch-perfect parodies from Christopher Guest and Co. (such as THIS IS SPINAL TAP and A MIGHTY WIND) and slapstick spoofs (such as AIRPLANE and the NAKED GUN) resides the farcical biopic WALK HARD: THE DEWEY COX STORY. Taking the critically lauded Johnny Cash biopic WALK THE LINE as its most obvious inspiration, WALK HARD plows its way through every rock star cliché--from drug use and rampant sex to artistic self-indulgence and spiritual redemption--laying waste to all of them with unremitting blasts of brilliantly lowbrow comedy. Written by Judd Apatow and starring Jon C. Reilly in the title role, WALK HARD is a deliciously basic synthesis of any number of ponderous biographical narratives with the poetic raunchiness of Apatow films, such as SUPERBAD and KNOCKED UP, and the most lovably inane aspects of Reilly's role as Cal Naughton Jr. in TALLEDEGA NIGHTS. In fact, fans will have a blast spotting the endless array of cameos by the gifted comic actors who pepper all of those films, including Jonah Hill, Kristin Wiig, Ed Helms, and Jack McBrayer, among many others. Although Reilly (whose comedic chops are nearly on par with his skills as a dramatic player) is hilarious as the hapless rock-&-roll icon Cox, and Jenna Fischer is utterly charming and slyly multifaceted as Darlene Madison (June to Dewey's Johnny), it's the ensemble cast that makes the film so much fun. WALK HARD is the cinematic equivalent of a rock-&-roll jam session: a basic, yet entertaining and fairly interesting idea gets tossed into the creative arena and everyone gets a chance to play along, riff on the idea, and mug for the camera. Though it's certainly no masterwork, fans will relish the good times as much as the actors so clearly do.
| Features | Audio: English, French Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound | | Dubbed: French | | Interactive Menus | | Scene Selection | | Subtitles: English, French, Spanish |
| Technical Info
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Release Information
| | Studio: Sony Pictures |
| Release Date: 4/8/2008 |
| Running Time: 216 minutes |
| Original Release Date: 2007 | | Catalog ID: 25078 | | UPC: 00043396250789 | | Number of Discs: 2 |
Audio & Video
| | Original Language: English | | Available Audio Tracks: English, French Dubbed | | Available Subtitles: English, French, Spanish | | Video: Color |
Aspect Ratio | | Anamorphic Widescreen 2.35:1 |
| Cast & Crew
| Awards |
Nominee (2008) | | | Golden Globe, Marshall Crenshaw, et. al., Best Original Song - Motion Picture | | | Golden Globe, John C. Reilly, Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy |
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| | Professional Reviews | New York Times
"It's a cleverly packaged story about a patently phony musician....It's a smarty-pants satire that mocks and embraces almost every cliche in the biography playbook." 12/21/2007Entertainment 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
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