Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Critic Reviews

Walk Hard isn't merciless (except for maybe one wicked sequence with the Beatles), and that's because it so loves what it's sending up: the pleasure, ego, and sheer exhaustion of what happens behind the music.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story has a good beat and you can dance to it, though mostly you'll probably just tap your foot.

Some laughs, but you expect more from Apatow.

Cox rocks.

Walk Hard is one of those fish-in-a-barrel comedies that mine a rich comedic vein but manage to come up with few genuine gems.

It's the Flintstones vitamin of spoofs.

This burlesque of biopic cliches flounders from one setup to the next without the engine that drives the genre: a strong central character.

There are a few too many lazy jokes played off Dewey's last name, but not nearly enough to wipe that grin off your face.

Walk Hard runs down quickly, and suffers further from having the wide-eyed and weightless Reilly as its star.

Instead of sending everything over the top at high energy, like Top Secret or Airplane!, they allow Reilly to more or less actually play the character, so that, against all expectations, some scenes actually approach real sentiment.

While "Walk Hard" makes for a fine soundtrack, it's less entertaining as a movie.

Apatow and director Jake Kasdan deliver a fair number of laughs, though nearly every good idea is pressed into service as a running gag. The biggest disappointment is their survey of rock history, which has all the depth of a Time-Life book.

Reilly is recklessly funny.

Writer-producer Judd Apatow, star John C. Reilly and director Jake Kasdan eviscerate the genre gleefully.

For half an hour or so, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is hilarious. Problem is, the movie lasts an hour and a half.

It's the role of a lifetime for Reilly, who plays Cox from a teenager to an old man (older actors playing kids are a running joke).

...Not all the bits (among them a "Yellow Submarine"-like acid trip) work equally well. Fortunately, there's a general exuberance and fondness for the musical material that eases the rough spots.

In a season filled with so many feel-bad movies, don't underestimate the appeal of something as silly as Walk Hard.

Never stops sprinting from its snickering start to that big finish.

Walk Hard is the kind of movie that you want to love and not just like, but liking it is good enough.

'Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story': Sadly inert, alleged spoof of the subgenre, the crooner biopic

In a season loaded with serious films about war and loss, there's bound to be an audience out there looking for some undemanding holiday laughs.

Walk Hard is funniest in its first half, when you're not quite sure where it's going, and drags in the second, by which time you realize it's going nowhere.

Walk Hard is a disposable film that offers its share of small pleasures and amusements.

A pitch-perfect musical comedy that at long last moves the talented John C. Reilly up the billing ladder from second banana to top banana.