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Walk Hard is a tremendous parody. Unfortunately, it isn’t a particularly good movie. Of course, I’m also not a fan of The Rutles, so just keep that in mind. As the title might imply, Walk Hard hews closest to Walk the Line (with Ray a close second), but it also skewers much of the music industry since 1960. And sure, most of the parodies are spot on. But that doesn’t mean they were funny or made for a particularly good movie.

The cast is pretty tremendous, and has way too many cool people to mention all the performances. It was a good role for Kristen Wiig, who was more tolerable than I normally find her. Margo Martindale is a name you may not recognize, but she’s been in tons of stuff I’ve seen over the past few months. She plays Dewey’s mom, and I just want to give her a shoutout as a top notch matronly character actress. It was nice to see Chris Parnell pop up, and he was one of my favorite characters. And Jenna Fischer is rather fetching (aside from being totally great):

Here’s a good place to point out I really enjoyed the original songs in the movie. They are funny, but catchy and always appropriate for the situation and era being parodied. Having Dan Bern along for the ride was an excellent call.

John C. Reilly is, by definition, awesome. It is interesting to think about the ride he’s taken, even since being Amos “Mr. Cellophane” Hart in Chicago. Still, Dewey Cox started to wear on me by the end. Considering how much screentime he had, I was surprised by the lack of depth to Dewey, and the repetitiveness of his actions.

I found the script terribly disappointing. Partially, I’m sure, because it was a Judd Apatow joint, and I was expecting more. Too many jokes seemed forced or implied. I found myself rather unamused for most of the film. I think making a movie of this sort is terribly difficult, since so much time is devoted to songs and the parodies themselves, meaning it is just that much harder to form a coherent plot and add in funny jokes. The jokes didn’t always miss. The Beatles scene was quite good:

Walk Hard may make you feel with it when you get one of the more obscure musical references, but like The Rutles, it ends up just being kinda boring, with a few interesting bits sprinkled in. Give me Spinal Tap any day.

Movie: Feast of Love

Released: 2007

Stars: Morgan Freeman, Greg Kinnear

With: Radha Mitchell, Selma Blair, Missi Pyle, Fred Ward

Reason for Watching: Trailer made it look decent.

I Can Name This Movie In One Note: Quasi-pastiche about love and life for couples, middle class style.

You Should See This Movie Because: It features Morgan Freeman narration. Which is always great. I’m pretty much a sucker for Greg Kinnear and his variations on the naive/sad sack character as this point (and that’s more than just a Little Miss Sunshine reference, thank you very much), it is one of my favorites.

Selma Blair topless lesbian scene. And even before it happened, I was thinking she was looking cuter than she sometimes does.

You Shouldn’t See This Movie Because: It isn’t particularly good. The story never really gets off the ground. The movie can’t really decide if it wants to be a pastiche or not, so the storylines tend to mesh awkwardly.

“Falling Slowly” (the Oscar-winning song from Once) plays over a rather explicit sex scene. That will freak the heck out of you.

The sex scenes in general tend toward the explicit, which isn’t normally a bad thing, but they really seem to throw off the pacing in the movie, as if they were in the movie at the behest of a producer, or someone desperately trying to establish some sense of tension or appeal.

Bottom Line: My impression is that most people missed this movie last year, and that’s probably for the best.