'Weird: The Al Yankovic Story' Review: Everything You Know Is Wrong In The Best Biopic Ever Made
Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. Image Source: The Roku Channel
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story premiered on November 4 on The Roku Channel. It stars Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic, with Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento and Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna. When the film was announced in January, many were turned off by its distribution method, while personally, it made perfect sense. Al’s been through the Hollywood system, first with 1989’s UHF, and even had a rather restrictive experience doing Saturday morning television on The Weird Al Show. Plus, he’s “Weird Al”. Conventional and popular streaming services, especially with Netflix and Prime Video so embedded while others have major studio ties, just wouldn’t feel right.
This parody biopic brings the comedy perfectly, even in its melodrama. Starting at Al’s childhood with the embellished unsupportive parents, he gets his first accordion and after some wild parties his roommates and eventual bandmates. Al starts coming up with his parodies. Not every song makes it into the movie, and why would all of them? We only get as far as his first album, or at least the story’s version. We only get half a dozen total songs featured, which makes sense, it’s not a musical.
RELATED:
Image Source: The Roku Channel
And that’s fine, it was personally reminiscent of Pokémon The Movie: I Choose You!, a retelling of Ash’s early journey that streamlined his team down to Pikachu, Caterpie, and Charmander, fully evolving the latter two and releasing Butterfree as he originally did. Anyway, those songs get rerecorded and sound amazing. “I Love Rocky Road” gets the attention of Dr. Demento, who becomes his manager. He takes him to a Hollywood party, and by god, coming off of Halloween, it feels like the best celebrities-wearing-celebrities costume party you’ll ever see. David Dastmalchian, Jack Black, and more knock it out of the park in these small roles. He gets “Another One Rides The Bus” off the cuff here, and the album is a huge success.
Image Source: The Roku Channel
From here, the movie strays further and further away from accuracy, indulging in doing so to its benefit. Madonna enters the picture wanting to get a bump in sales from a potential Yankovic parody. They enter a torrid love affair that isolates him professionally. The entire reality of “Eat It” shifts, and it sends Al into a drunken downward spiral and Radcliffe is clearly having the time of his life with it. Car accidents, arrests, and the Mexican drug cartel, all end badly for Al with Madonna. Feeling at the lowest point in his career, he works and reconciles with his father, whose tragic accordion-based backstory inspires the next big ‘80s hit: “Amish Paradise”! You read that right. It brings Al great success and the movie ends.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is the best comedy of the year and the best biopic for its lightheartedness, applying all the clichés to such an unproblematic man. In playing with all the tropes and parodying the exaggerations, he gets to live out his action movie fantasies, and good for him, well deserved. Go watch it. It’s getting a 9 out of 10. The Roku Channel is free, available on iOS and Fire TV and probably several other platforms.
Score: 9/10
READ NEXT:
Latest News
Featured
