So much fodder exists about Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, and Bob Dylan why dramatize what we already know? The same could be said of Madonna, if only Weird didn't reduce her to a one-note farce bordering on sexism. In 2007, the impressionistic I'm Not There told Bob Dylan's life story using six distinct characters inspired by the folk singer's evolving personas. Last year's mesmerizing Spencer, starring Kristen Stewart as a troubled Princess Diana, imagines the British royal family's chilly Christmas celebrations from 1991, a private gathering that leaves ample room for conjecture. The gag goes from winking and satirical to actively anti-Madonna. But, as the movie slips further from reality, what could have been a memorable cameo turns into a crucial subplot.
Presenting Madonna as a fame-chasing steamroller who knows a shrewd business move when she sees one isn't far from the truth, and Wood ratchets up her coquettishness to an outrageous degree. Hungry for her own slice of Yancovician shine, she appears at his front door wearing her ’80s signatures, specifically the bangles, black lace gloves, and teased-out hair from "Lucky Star" and the wedding dress from "Like a Virgin." Within minutes, Madonna is undressing Al on a couch, initiating the volcanic encounter one might expect from the author of a book called Sex. This particular Madonna (a gum-popping Evan Rachel Wood, having a ball with her feigned Brooklyn inflections) learns of the "Weird Al bump"-a phenomenon that supposedly benefits the repute of any singer he parodies-on a news broadcast. Instead, we get hyperbole that coasts on one repetitive gag-never more inflated or annoying than during an overextended segment in which Weird Al, played by Daniel Radcliffe, dates a Machiavellian nympho version of Madonna. Here, finally, is a celebrity whose anomalous career deserves a legitimate movie, however goofy that movie should be. Weird, which Yankovic co-wrote with director Eric Appel (Funny or Die, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), lacks the zany laughs of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, which more effectively spoofed biopic conventions in 2007. Lax on facts in a way that suits its subject's improbable fame, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story poses clever questions: What if the master of pop parody wasn’t some niche curiosity? What if he'd become the biggest rock star in the world? What if Michael Jackson's "Beat It" had imitated Weird Al's "Eat It," instead of the other way around?įun stuff, in theory. On paper, the Weird Al movie sounds like an antidote to the rote biopics and documentaries about celebrities that now flood theaters and streaming services year after year.
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