Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

The Judd Apatow comedy machine has been a most reliable laugh factory as of late. 2007 saw the one-two punch of Knocked Up ,which he directed, and Superbad, which he produced. With the arrival of this movie starring the great John C. Reilly, I was figuring Apatow, again producing, would have a 2007 hat trick. Not quite. The film isn’t a disaster by any means. It has a quick, funny start followed by an intermittently hilarious middle and dull ending. The air sort of goes out of the movie as it progresses and it eventually goes flat. It spoofs bio-pic films like Ray and Walk the Line, and some of the jokes (including sequences involving The Beatles and Bob Dylan) are hilarious. But too many of the jokes are stale. Too bad, because Reilly is an actor who deserves top billing, and he puts everything into the part. A surprising disappointment.