If you've had more than your fill by now of those cookie cutter, tearjerker music biopics that follow the inevitable trajectory from rough roots to fame, a fall from grace and final redemption, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story may just have the cure. And it's ab
out time. This satirical tongue-in-check musical, spoofs movies like the Johnny Cash weepie Walk The Line and Ray's over-the-top emotional frenzy, while parodying with a vengeance the whole mystique of celebrity sainthood. Move over, Britney Spears.
John C. Reilly does Dewey Cox as an initially troubled, hilariously beer gut middle-aged teen, courtesy of a makeup department that deliberately discarded the usual ridiculously youth-enhancing makeovers here for its over-the-hill stars, relatively speaking. In a wacko Abel and Cain setup, Dewey suffers second-class status in his dysfunctional backwoods family to favored brother Daniel. One day while engaging in a little fantasy swordplay in the barn, Dewey possibly not so accidentally severs his resented sibling in two. And it's a strangely comical disaster which seals his fate as family pariah, doomed to wander the earth a moody and moping sad sack, when not happily jamming on stage.
The movie, directed by Jake Kasdan, was co-written by Kasdan and the productive Judd Apatow, and they do an interesting thing: Instead of sending everything over the top at high energy, 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 I'm not sure adds to t
he appeal.Walk Hard, with its raunchy comedy skit-to-screen sensibility, not surprisingly has its frequent ups and downs, but with the buoyant moments offering plenty to forgive the more stagnant interludes. Among the coolest high-lights count the variously drugged Dewey indulging in controlled substance group activity with participants parading around in assorted states of undress; and his encounter as a little kid with some seasoned elderly bluesmen in the woods who hand over the guitar, and novice Dewey's belting out a number in raspy baritone like a pro who's eight going on eighty.
Then it's on to an early gig during his loser period, worshipfully mopping up a black folks' disco. Inevitably of course, Dewey drops janitor duty and begs his way on to the stage the one night that the main attraction rapper calls in sick. Not quite getting it that he's the only white guy on the premises, Dewey indulges his own inner rapper with some
Equally radical but tame in intent pulled off by Apatow and Kasden from just about but not quite going off that rude deep end, is a mock-lewd episode of nasty gyrations on the same house floor. And the devilish duo is not at all shy about taking what's really going on with those highly suggestive moves, to what might actually be marinating in the dirty minds of those too much information, sexually charged dancers.
2012 is exactly what the trailers make it look like: a bombastic disaster film.
It's not so much that the Earth is destroyed, but that it's done so thoroughly. 2012, the mother of all disaster movies (and the father, and the extended family) spends half an hour on ominous set-up scenes (scientists warn, strange events occur, prophets rant and of course a family is introduced) and then 
It also continues a recent trend toward the wholesale destruction of famous monuments. Roland Emmerich, the director and co-writer, has been vandalizing monuments for years, as in
Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and Godzilla.
In all disaster movies, landmarks fall like dominos. The Empire State Building is made of rubber. The Golden Gate Bridge collapses like clockwork. Big Ben ticks his last. The Eiffel Tower? Quel dommage!
Emmerich thinks on a big scale. Yes, he destroys regular stuff. It will come as little surprise (because at this writing the film's trailer on YouTube alone had more than 7,591,413 views) that the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy rides a tsunami onto the White House. When St. Peter's Basilica is destroyed, Leonardo's God and Adam are split apart just where their fingers touch (the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel having been moved into St. Peter's for the occasion). Then when Emmerich gets warmed up, the globe's tectonic plates shift thousands of miles, water covers the planet, and a giraffe walks aboard an ark.
Many gigantic arks have been secretly constructed
inside the Himalayas by the Chinese, funded by a global consortium, and they're the only chance of the human race surviving. Along with the animals on board, there's the maybe well-named Noah. In theory, ark ticket holders represent a cross-section of the globe, chosen democratically. In practice, this clique pulls strings to benefit the rich and connected, and wants to strand desperate poor people on the dock.Such questions pale by comparison with more alarming events. The tectonic plates shift so violently scientists can almost see them on Google Earth. This havoc requires stupendous special effects. Emmerich's budget was $250 million, and "2012" may contain more f/x in total running time than any other film. They're impressive. Not always convincing, because how can the flooding of the Himalayas be made convincing? And Emmerich gives us time to regard the effects and appreciate them, even savor them.
Emmmerich also constructs dramatic real-scale illusions, as when an earthquake fissure splits a grocery store in half. John Cusack is the hero in an elaborate sequence involving his desperate attempts to unblock a jammed h
ydraulic lift that threatens to sink the ark. He does a lot of heroic stuff in this film, especially for a novelist, like leaping a van over a yawning chasm and riding a small plane through roiling clouds of earthquake dust.The bottom line is: The movie gives you your money's worth. Is it a masterpiece? No. Is it one of the year's best? No. Does Emmerich hammer it together with his elbows from parts obtained from the Used Disaster Movie Store? Yes. But is it about as good as a movie in this genre can be? Yes. No doubt it will inflame fears about our demise on Dec. 21, 2012. I'm worried, too. Knowing my days are numbered, I'm gonna have to play Modern Warfare 6 more passionately from now on.