TIFF 2022 | MOVIE REVIEW: "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" Will Polka Your Eyes Out
9/12 ForReel Score | 4/5 Stars
How much do you know about the story behind pop music’s most unabashedly goofed-out and frizzy-haired parody artist, Alfred “Weird Al” Yankovic? Bits and pieces? A scrambled guestimation? Nothing at all? Good. You’re more than ready for the long-awaited, Eric Appel-directed and Daniel Radcliffe-starring biopsy of a biopic, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story.
An expansion of the treasured Funny or Die short—also helmed by Appel (which Yankovic admits he’s been screening at his concerts)—Weird is an exceedingly on-the-nose and off-the-wall rendering of the rock star’s journey, told without a shred of seriousness and a big candy-coated heart on its sleeve. It is Yankovic through-and-through, and it’s remarkable that I can say that myself, me not knowing much about the man beyond his tongue-in-cheek hits such as “Another One Rides the Bus” and “Eat It”. Rest assured, both songs feature prominently in this picture—but don’t expect any factual insight on their inception. Appel and Yankovic work together to concoct parody origin stories of the “quintuple platinum” recording artist’s parody tracks (the layering is delicious), thereby confusing our conceptions of Yankovic the artist, as well as our conceptions of Yankovic the person. As the film gleefully reminds us, any “truth” or poignancy behind either is virtually meaningless; what matters is that the songs and the person make us laugh. When you laugh—when you embrace the weird—that is as close as you ever need to be “knowing” and “understanding” Yankovic.
I laughed consistently throughout Weird, and that is how I can say it served its subject to the best of its abilities. At its Midnight Madness premier in Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre, how could I not have? The packed venue practically crackled with giddy energy (many audience came outfitted in their busiest and brightest shirts), and everyone wholeheartedly embraced the film’s many clap- and sing-along opportunities. It can be said that some of the film’s momentum is lost around the halfway mark—a result of its stubborn insistence on leaving no biopic trop un-skewered—but thankfully, Appel jolts his film out of its lull with perhaps the most unexpectedly action-forward sequence of the year.
Image courtesy of TIFF.
Radcliffe commits with panache a whole 108-minutes worth of manic energy and physicality to screen, a performance liable to leave you feeling the effects of a sugar rush. His take on the comedy songsmith is as loopy a caricature as Yankovic could have hoped for, simultaneously in-tune with Yankovic as it is a surface level extrapolation of a Yankovic cypher. Evan Rachel Wood is unable to match his energy, and understandably so, but she still turns in a suitably saccharine and antagonistic riff on Madonna. I am also required to inform you of—but not spoil—this film’s expansive list of cameos. For Appel and co. to have gathered so many comedians over the course of an 18-day shoot—for this film to have wrapped production in 18 days... period—is a gobsmacking feat in and of itself. You truly cannot prepare yourself.
Weird certainly doesn’t reinvent the parody film, but you’d be kidding yourself if that’s what you tell yourself to expect going in. Weird Al has always existed comfortably in a post-(post)modern pop world where everything has already been done and the only perennially sweet spot for comedy is a shameless embrace of this reality. He takes the cloying catchiness of over-played pop song and marries it with the absurd mundanity of the everyday. The resulting brand of weird has never been as “weird” and as groundbreaking as other properties from more envelope-pushing artists—but that’s the point. Get over yourself. Bologna is a funny word.
