'Weird' takes the why out of Yankovic
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At a time when people were very much not embracing all things nerdy and/or corny, an accordion player named Al Yankovic carved out a massively successful place in the mainstream music industry by parodying existing popular songs. THAT is a plenty worthy narrative for a legitimate biopic, exploring not just how the outsider of all outsiders managed to do this but what it says about American culture that it worked then and remains beloved now—when Yankovic’s good-natured silliness is anything but common in an often horrifying landscape.
No one, however, seems to have informed the artist himself of this. Co-writing his own absurd, deliberately inaccurate biopic as if far superior efforts like “Popstar” and “Walk Hard” never existed, Yankovic (played as an adult by Daniel Radcliffe) turns his career into an outlandish, improbable lark whose unlikeliness shines no light on the fact that the very basics (accordion player becomes famous for parody songs) really happened and very much overdoes it on the things that didn’t (goofball falls into a torrid affair with one of the ‘80s’ biggest pop stars and does violent battle with a drug cartel). That isn’t to say that “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” directed and co-written by Eric Appel, doesn’t have a decent number of laughs. “Weird” is a pretty funny movie that completely undermines its reason for existing.
Yankovic’s music isn’t even driven by the type of over-the-top bits that pop up in “Weird.” Certain moments, like a direct play off of Eddie Adams arriving at Jack Horner’s party in “Boogie Nights,” are hilarious but fall apart after too many cameos (Jorma Taccone is great as Pee-wee Herman, though) and not enough focus on the main character. The weirdest part of “Weird” is how disinterested Yankovic seems in exploring his motivations, inspirations and demons, setting the story against a generic quest for his family’s approval and bland goal of moving beyond parody songs to writing originals (which the movie just turns into a joke, pretending that some parodies are original, rather than considering his feelings about fan response to the originals vs. the parodies).
The perfectly cast Radcliffe (who’s become an excellent, all-in actor; catch up with “Swiss Army Man” now) is wonderfully offbeat throughout, convincing in every foolish direction that “Weird” goes. Anyone that can pull off a line like “I’m not bumping [Howie] Mandel for Zeppelin” is earning goodwill in spades. But “Weird” deflates instead of excites and grates instead of delights. If you think that rhyme was lame, please recall that “Amish Paradise” was once a big hit on MTV, and consider if we would’ve been better off actually looking directly at the subject instead of trying to embrace its zany personality.
In other words, you know the usual problem with most biopics? Yeah, the opposite applies here.
C
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