The Cinema of the Four

Walk Hard

To the amateur comedian, parody is perhaps the easiest form of humor. To the professional film-maker, however, it would seem to be as mysterious as a feminine ghost pirate haunting a gas station in Topeka.

Recent years have seen such nominal “parodies” as “Date Movie” and “Epic Movie,” where simply copying a popular movie scene in an identical fashion seemed to be considered “comedy.” We’ve seen sports parodies, teen parodies, and “Balls of Fury,” which I think was supposed to be a parody of a parody. Movie Inspector Lestrade IV often tells me that the movie parody has run its course . . . which seems to me much like saying the Indy 500 is over just because the cars won’t go over 30 miles per hour. The true race would never have even begun in such a case, and so it is with parody movies.

The recent film “Walk Hard” is, on its surface, a parody of the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line.” Along the way, it finds time to skewer all sorts of subjects not in the fore of “Walk the Line,” like the Beatles, TV variety shows, and celebrity pet fetishes. But does it work any better than the likes of “Date Movie.”

Well, one certainly wants it to. The cast is a legion of comedy-movie favorites, in the big roles, the small ones, and cameos. Want to see Harold Ramis, Jack Black, Justin Long, Tim Meadows, Franie Muniz, Rance Howard, etc., etc., in one movie? Want to see John C. Reilly, a likable actor whose popular movie credits go all the way back to “Days of Thunder,” finally get to star in a major motion picture? Want to see a sweet kind-hearted comedy that still has naked male genitalia and a lot of “f” words?

Certainly one might like to skip that last part, but “Walk Hard” is a comedy that one really wants to succeed, but that, I think, is the clue to its failure. Here is a comedy that will make you smile time after time, but not quite bust out laughing. A lot of the jokes seem deliberate, well-thought out, and . . . while clever . . . just not spontaneous enough. Remember that moment of dinner table insanity in “Talledega Nights” when a little boy told his grandfather, “I’m gonna come at you like a spider monkey, Chip!” There’s no logic to that. It’s just wild, unreasonable chaos comedy. And perhaps “Walk Hard” could have done with a bit more of that.

Still, a movie worth seeing if one isn’t easily offended by the parts mentioned earlier, with catchy tunes and a wonderful cast.

What Great-grandfather Sherlock might have said:
“So aloof is he from general suspicion, so immune from criticism, so admirable in his management and self-effacement.”