weird al yankovic movie review

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“Weird Al” Yankovic stands at the precipice of greatness and next to some hot dog buns when he has another eureka moment. At a party packed with the real Yankovic's spiritual influences—including Andy Warhol , Gallagher, Elvira, Tiny Tim , Devine, and Pee-Wee Herman —the ascending parody artist is challenged to show his skills on the spot, to come up with another parody. With an accordion in hand and his bandmates’ hand-farts and suitcase providing percussion, Daniel Radcliffe ’s version of “Weird Al” turns Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” into “Another One Rides the Bus,” lip-syncing Yankovic’s voice with the same volcanic intensity as Eminem rap-battling for his life in “ 8 Mile .” It’s one of many sarcastic flashes of genius in this biopic, but it does have BBQ attendee Salvador Dalí reacting, “‘Weird Al’ will change everything we know about art!”  

However serious you take that exclamation, it comes from a perfect centerpiece scene for “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” a pop music phantasmagoria that’s equally egoless and entertaining. Co-written by director Eric Appel and “Weird Al” Yankovic, “Weird” distills what has kept Yankovic a subversive force on the Billboard charts since the 1980s to create one of the funniest movies of the year.  

The plotting of “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” is its own big joke, a fever dream by a self-deprecating entertainer looking into a funhouse mirror. Yankovic did become a legendary accordion player thanks to a door-to-door salesman; Madonna (played here by Evan Rachel Wood , relishing every bubble gum chew in a comically villainous role) did request that Yankovic parody her song "Like a Virgin,” leading to the birth of Yankovic’s “Like a Surgeon”; Yankovic did record songs like “I Love Rocky Road,” “My Bologna,” and Michael Jackson parody “Eat It,” proving that parodies can be commercial in an evolving music business. But the giddy thrill of "Weird" is the rollicking ways it takes to hit these points while spoofing the wholesomeness of Yankovic’s image. The real “Weird Al” does not drink to excess, take hallucinogens, or rip off his Hawaiian shirts on stage to bear a six-pack. This version hilariously does, which itself is an act of preserving humility about who “Weird Al” truly is.  

This movie flourishes with absurd opposites; take Yankovic’s loving parents, who are now imagined here as the bitter inspiration for his success. His father ( Toby Huss ) wants him to take on a life “at the factory” (a funny ongoing joke) and has forced Yankovic to become a closeted accordion player (his mother, played by a tender Julianne Nicholson , bought it for him secretly). It’s an imperfect foundation for the comedy: it inspires sweetness from young Al and a hilariously over-the-top reaction, as when the boy's first parody causes his father to yell, “What you’re doing is confusing, and evil!” But it also hews a little too close to “ Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ,” a previous music biopic comedy that dominated such tropes behind the Tortured Great Musician, which always starts with elusive parent validation.

But “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" has many of its own ideas, breaking from the true story with zeal. This fracture happens right about the time Yankovic is given guacamole laced with LSD by his real-life mentor Dr. Demento ( Rainn Wilson ) and during an animated acid trip writes a song called “Eat It,” which the real Yankovic and Will Forte (as smarmy executives) then confirm is “100% original.” The success turns this “Weird Al” into the most popular recording artist of all time, and  People deems him the “Sexiest Man Alive.” When Oprah ( Quinta Brunson ) interviews him, he wears mini platinum records around his neck.  

A plot line about this "Weird Al" wanting to then only write original songs is especially inspired, as Yankovic has countless gems that are highly literate parodies of a band's entire discography — they just don’t play on the radio. In this version, "Weird Al" believes that only original songs will make people take him seriously as an artist. It requires retconning of all of pop music history for this movie to make that possible. 

The script is full of such amazing fakeouts and downplays, and instead of losing momentum by feeling like it's just stretching its “Funny or Die” skit origins, its plotting often zig-zags and then goes turbo on a bit for 10 minutes. “Weird” beats the accusation of being “a feature-length version of a skit” by not trying to play the more formal narrative game that has undone countless "Saturday Night Live" movies and made that phrase a modern diss. And its editing, with rhythms inspired by “Airplane!”, builds to incredible pay-offs (a couple including amazing references to something called a “hay boy”). Even its ending is jaw-dropping and laugh-out-loud; it’s one of Yankovic’s most wholesome-extreme jokes he’s ever made.  The closing credits had me in tears. 

Radcliffe is perfect as Yankovic, starting with the actor’s control of his artistic image, which has previously allowed him to be as seriously compelling as a farting corpse (" Swiss Army Man "). He completes what makes this parody of Yankovic’s clean-cut image so funny—the vivid innocence that soon turns into a brash arrogance, fueled by the desire to prove himself to his parents and the world. It's fitting when Radcliffe’s version of Yankovic is thrown into an elaborate action scene that explodes out of nowhere, with Radcliffe’s physicality and game nature adding to the movie’s overall joke and joy. Radcliffe’s performance is vulgar without violating the anchoring credo that allows Yankovic’s to be wholesome while letting its visual lyrics reach extremes—no cussing.  

Throughout, Radcliffe's musical performances as “Weird Al” are lip-synced by the real Yankovic, a choice that reminds the viewer of why we’re all here: a storyteller whose work is sincere, very silly, respectful that the audience will get the joke, and comfortably unhinged. The darker corners of Yankovic's style—about macabre delusions, (“Good Old Days”), over-the-top violence (“The Night Santa Went Crazy"), and devastating heartbreak ("You Don't Love Me Anymore”)—are applied to hilarious set-pieces that often go farther than you expect. Fans, new and longtime, who want a more accurate telling of Yankovic’s story will have to dig up the “Behind the Music” episode about Yankovic, (a collection of anecdotes about his nearly subversive sobriety), or read the work of Yankovic scholars like Nathan Rabin and Lily E. Hirsch.  

“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” strictly doesn’t include those above-mentioned pieces of his discography; it mostly only includes the songs that can be found on the greatest hits tape that converted this writer decades ago. But it’s more spiritually in tune with the epic album closers Yankovic has put at the end of his more recent albums, like his Frank Zappa homage “Genius in France.” Like how that nine-minute song (also self-deprecating) bounces between various time signatures and grooves while always being catchy and funny, “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” lets the level of craftiness quietly speak for itself. Yankovic preserves only a certain kind of “Weird Al,” and yet it carries the values that have made him relevant for so long: that a (great) parody is an act of mastering, and that daring to be stupid is an unorthodox but fruitful path toward brilliance.

Now playing on the Roku Channel. 

Nick Allen is the former Senior Editor at RogerEbert.com and a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)

108 minutes

Daniel Radcliffe as 'Weird Al' Yankovic

Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna

Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento

Toby Huss as Nick Yankovic

Julianne Nicholson as Mary Yankovic

Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey

"Weird Al" Yankovic as Tony Scotti

Will Forte as Ben Scotti

Patton Oswalt as Heckler

Michael McKean as Sleazy MC

Dot-Marie Jones as Mama Bear

Jorma Taccone as Pee-Wee Herman

Demetri Martin as Tiny Tim

Paul F. Tompkins as Gallagher

Akiva Schaffer as Alice Cooper

Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol

Emo Philips as Salvador Dali

Nina West as Divine

Jack Black as Wolfman Jack

David Dastmalchian as John Deacon

Josh Groban as Waiter

Seth Green as Radio DJ

• "Weird Al" Yankovic

Cinematographer

• Jamie Kennedy
• Leo Birenberg
• Zach Robinson

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Roku’s Weird Al movie is ridiculous in the best possible ways

Weird: the al yankovic story is a biopic with barely an ounce of truth to it.

By Andrew Webster , an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story opens with a shirtless Daniel Radcliffe screaming in a hospital, demanding a pencil and paper from Lin-Manuel Miranda. Things only get weirder from there. Though it may look like the life story of the titular parody singer, the movie is actually more of a parody of biopics than anything else. Much like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story lampooned the many overserious films about major musical stars, Weird does the same, only it pretends to be about a real person. After watching it, I don’t think I know anything new about Yankovic — and I definitely know a lot of things that are not remotely true. Fittingly for a guy who writes absurd lyrics over popular songs, Weird takes a popular concept — the music biopic — and makes it equally absurd. In the same way that I still can’t believe when “Amish Paradise” gets stuck in my head, I couldn’t believe how much I laughed during Weird .

The movie follows the typical route of the biopic. We start with humble beginnings, move to the meteoric rise to stardom, and suffer through the tragic fall from grace before finally hitting the redemptive conclusion. The difference here is that almost everything is made up, and the filmmakers have no interest in telling you what’s real or fake.

Yankovic’s love of the accordion, for instance, is turned into a defiant act of rebellion. His father, a stern man who works at a dangerous factory that creates… something, calls musical parodies “evil” and Al’s instrument of choice “the devil’s squeezebox.” Later on, an older Yankovic is busted by the cops after sneaking out to perform at a high school polka party. But the movie really kicks into gear — and gets completely ridiculous — when we meet adult Weird Al, played by Radcliffe.

For starters, his meteoric rise happens literally overnight, and his success is comically huge: he’s on the cover of every magazine, named sexiest man alive, and breaks virtually every sales record in the industry. He becomes the biggest star in the world, and other pop stars beg him for parodies. At one point, at a party featuring everyone from Andy Warhol to Pee-wee Herman, Salvador Dalí exclaims that “Weird Al will change the world.” I don’t want to spoil all of the jokes, but to give you a sense of how strange things get, there’s an LSD trip through hell, a life-defining romance with Madonna, a retcon on the origins of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” and a feud with Pablo Escobar. My favorite ongoing joke is the multiple extremely literal origin stories the film comes up with for songs like “My Bologna” and “Like a Surgeon.” It even ends with a surprisingly sweet (though also fake) origin for “Amish Paradise.”

What makes it work is how committed the film is to the bit. It follows the musical biopic formula exactly, but the degree of absurdity just keeps expanding to the point that it doesn’t feel all that out of place when Yankovic eventually becomes an incredibly adept assassin running through the jungles of Colombia. Radcliffe, in particular, really sells it, playing the in-reality goofy Yankovic with a level of seriousness that’s an ideal fit for a music biopic. He narrates with a deep, gruff voice reminiscent of classic movie trailers and somehow manages to turn the iconic ‘stache, glasses, and Hawaiian shirts into a sexy ensemble. Yes, Weird Al is now hot. There are also oh so many cameos complimenting his performance, to the point that I want to rewatch it to see who I missed. (I won’t want to ruin the many surprises.)

Now that I’ve seen the film, I’ve realized that I probably don’t want a true-to-life story about Weird Al’s life anyway. Weird isn’t a success because it gives me some kind of deep insight into the tortured life of a brilliant artist. It’s a success because it’s the most extreme and strange send-up of music biopics yet, one that uses a real-life figure to make those goofy and definitely not true moments hit even harder.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is streaming on the Roku Channel starting November 4th. This review is based on a screening at the Toronto International Film Festival.

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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Reviews

The film's honesty is inspiring, touching on such easily verifiable occurrences as his love affair with Madonna, his gun battle with drug lord Pablo Escobar, and the fact that “Eat It” was an original composition which Al wrote before MJ penned “Beat It.”

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 26, 2023

... "Weird" is a celebration of Yankovic by playing loose with the truth and essentially functioning as a parody of every biography released in cinema history and any that may come next.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 8, 2023

It’s campy and overtly silly. It is precisely what one would expect from Yankovic.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2023

Radcliffe’s not the first name that comes to mind when casting a comic role but his embracing of the absurdity makes it all so funny.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Aug 9, 2023

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is amazingly unhinged with its slew of charming performances, and it boasts an ending that will be hard for future musical biopics to beat.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 26, 2023

One of the biggest surprises when it comes to a comedy. A straight parody on biopics/music industry that incredibly turns everything upside down like Weird Al did for the music genre. IT’S BRILLIANT… Daniel Radcliffe is GREAT

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

Weird has plenty to offer longtime acolytes of Yankovic’s music but it’s far from a collection of in-jokes, references and fan service.

Full Review | Jun 30, 2023

Walk Hard got to a lot of this stuff 15 years ago, and with much more precision.

Full Review | May 2, 2023

Whether you’re a fan of the lyric-changing, polka-loving musical artist or not, it is hard not to enjoy this truly anarchic comedy.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 19, 2023

When it works, it is because it finds just the right balance between the legitimate form it is parodying and the ridiculousness of the content stuffed into it. In other words, it is like a feature-length “Weird Al” music video.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 27, 2023

There are genuine moments of genius, but I wish it had been as jam-packed with jokes (considering the too-long running time) as a typical Weird Al tune (or even The Vidiot from UHF).

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 17, 2023

It’s a collection of sketches where the whole is less than the pieces.

Full Review | Mar 2, 2023

The dude just makes parody songs, and is pretty chill. What kind of movie are you going to make out of that? A pretty dang entertaining one as it turns out.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2023

…(Weird: The Al Yankovic Story) is non-stop, jam-packed, all killa, no filla comedy gold from all concerned, and I’d cheerfully give this six stars if I could…

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 17, 2023

The screenplay is inventive and fresh, spoofing the bio-pic genre, taking a page from Weird Al himself, in ways that are not only clever and unpredictable, but side-splittingly hilarious and, yes, really really weird.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 12, 2023

An outburst of genius from a showman who cements his musical art on humor and with his being vindicates what's weird and strange. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Dec 27, 2022

This was a very entertaining film. It's so meta and give so many amazing memorable historic moments from the legendary Weird Al Yankovic. Daniel Radcliffe plays this almost to perfection and his surround cast complement this film even more as a comedy!

Full Review | Original Score: B | Dec 26, 2022

Between Swiss Army Man and Miracle Workers (and even The Lost City and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) Daniel Radcliffe proves one again that he is one of the most willing actors of his generation. His Al is eager, arrogant, assured, and coy all at once.

Full Review | Dec 26, 2022

“Weird” may not be for everyone, but it never assumes the audience knows anything. That’s why the ride is so enjoyable. Hop aboard and you might just be part of the posse who’s bringing polka back.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 20, 2022

A goofy made-up plot about Al’s relationship with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) sends the film off on an unfunny tangent from which it never returns.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 19, 2022

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Explores every facet of Yankovic's life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like 'Eat It' and 'Like a Surgeon' to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyl... Read all Explores every facet of Yankovic's life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like 'Eat It' and 'Like a Surgeon' to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle. Explores every facet of Yankovic's life, from his meteoric rise to fame with early hits like 'Eat It' and 'Like a Surgeon' to his torrid celebrity love affairs and famously depraved lifestyle.

• 'Weird Al' Yankovic
• Diedrich Bader
• Daniel Radcliffe
• Lin-Manuel Miranda
• 281 User reviews
• 108 Critic reviews
• 70 Metascore
• 16 wins & 39 nominations total

• Grizzled Narrator

• Dr. Demento

• (as Andrew Hernandez)

• Hipster Teen
• (as Paloma Rabinov)

• Police Officer

• Johnny Barf

• Jeremy Barf

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Originally, Freddie Mercury was supposed to be at the pool party, but Queen said no. They did, however, allow an appearance by John Deacon , which worked out as Deacon was the one who wrote "Another One Bites the Dust", which is not mentioned in the scene but Deacon's insistence on that song being parodied by Al puts more emphasis on the satirical portrayal of Deacon as a self-centered semi-celebrity.
• Goofs Tiny Tim is shown playing the ukulele right-handed. In reality, he was left-handed and played the uke as such.

Young Al : You... you think you're going to stop me from playing? You'll see. One day I'm going to be the best... Well, perhaps not technically the best, but arguably the most famous accordion player in an extremely specific genre of music!

• Crazy credits The end credits feature an original song by 'Weird Al' Yankovic . The lyrics point out a specific person in the credits (production manager for Funny or Die Savvas Thomas Yiannoulou ), reference the song credits, and include a reminder that the song itself is technically eligible for Oscar consideration.
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: It's Time for a Double-Down (2022)
• Soundtracks Dr. Demento Theme (Pico and Sepulveda) Written by Eddie Cherkose , Jule Styne Edwin H. Morris & Co., a division of MPL Music Publishing, Inc. (ASCAP); Quaytor Productions, LLC (ASCAP) Performed by The Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band Used courtesy of Caf Muzeck LLC/Demented Punk

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 48 minutes

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Daniel Radcliffe commits to the bit 10,000% in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

It’s a fun movie that plays with reality, fantasy, and parody, but it lives and dies on Radcliffe’s performance

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This review was originally published in conjunction with the movie’s premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. It has been updated and republished to reflect the film’s streaming release.

For nearly five decades now, one man has defined what parody music looks like at its best. His subjects have ranged from pop icons like Madonna and Michael Jackson to rock and hip-hop creators like Joan Jett and Coolio. He isn’t known by his name so much as by his chosen title: “Weird Al” Yankovic.

Some of the first words uttered in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story are meant as satire: “Life is like a parody of your favorite songs,” a nod to Forrest Gump ’s iconic “ box of chocolates ” line. This is what every single beat of Eric Appel’s feature film expansion of his Funny or Die short of the same name aims for. Why wouldn’t a biopic of a parody artist’s life be a parody itself? Accordingly, Weird is relentless about poking fun at practically every damn subject it touches. Co-written by Appel and Yankovic himself, the film both embraces and skewers most of the musical biopics that came before it, along with the history of music itself. It’s something of an onslaught of humor, using every scene as an excuse to deliver one or more jokes — usually a lot more. Much like Appel’s original faux-trailer short, the feature rewrites Yankovic’s life by creating a strange amalgamation of reality and fiction.

Weird starts at the faux end of Yankovic’s life, in a hospital death scene quickly revealed as a fake-out and setup for a long history. Appel and Yankovic (played in the film by Harry Potter series star Daniel Radcliffe) take their sweet time moving through the kind of moments that music biopics are well known for doing to death: childhood trauma and fractured parental relationships, meteoric rises to fame and casually shocking collaborations, a tender mentorship and a heartbreaking descent into the world of drugs, sex, and alcohol. One of the film’s greatest strengths is the way it expertly links these false scenarios in with Weird Al’s real history, consistently forcing the audience to question what reality really means within fiction.

Accuracy has become the definitive measure of how contemporary biopics are judged, but Appel and Yankovic question that concept. Some filmmakers choose to sacrifice history in favor of a sanitized, accessible product, typically at the request of the artists being documented, or those who manage their image. ( Bohemian Rhapsody is a prime example.) Other filmmakers aim for something closer to an honest version of reality, like Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent , as opposed to Jalil Lespert’s “approved” Yves Saint Laurent . Or they embrace fantasy and metaphor to paint a greater portrait of an artist, like Todd Haynes’ brilliant I’m Not There .

Even in documentary portraits, though, packaging a life into a few hours produces an obvious, undeniable falseness. And the audience is only seeing the artist through the eyes of whoever’s creating the story. This is where Yankovic’s parody skills come in handy . He expertly rewrites history to the point of such blatant falseness that even viewers who barely have an inkling about Yankovic’s true life story can still recognize how he’s adapted it for his comic benefit.

The film moves comfortably between its three expected acts: Weird Al’s rise as a parody artist in spite of a closeted accordion-playing childhood; his downfall due to drugs, alcohol, and Madonna’s influence; and his image rehabilitation after the demise of his relationship and a return to his past that brings true peace of mind and canonization. Much of the film is frankly unreal — the simplest bits of history are sometimes the most sincere ones, from the way Yankovic recorded his debut song, “ My Bologna ,” in a university bathroom because it had good acoustics to the way Dr. Demento’s comedy-music show brought Yankovic to national attention. Along the way, the film even recontextualizes his live productions, like his “Like a Surgeon” performance that parodies Madonna’s Truth or Dare performance of “Like a Virgin.”

Weird ’s approach to musical history morphs actual events, both niche and obvious, into moments revolving around Yankovic, in openly ridiculous ways. There’s Weird Al, wearing six platinum records around his neck, getting the full Oprah interview treatment, as if his fame was ever truly at that level. He’s being arrested in Miami for public exposure in Jim Morrison’s place , an event reframed as Yankovic whipping out his accordion onstage, rather than his genitals. (The film frames accordions as obscene throughout the film, including when teenage Yankovic is caught by cops while playing one at a polka party.)

Pablo Escobar’s reported interest in kidnapping Michael Jackson is transformed into a subplot where Escobar is instead obsessed with Yankovic, and kidnapping his in-film girlfriend Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood). There’s even a Boogie Nights -style backyard party of celebrities that places Elton John, Pee-wee Herman, Devo, Tiny Tim, Gallagher, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí, Wolfman Jack, John Deacon, and Divine (among many others) all in the same room at once, floored by the power of Weird Al’s parodying abilities.

Its true turning point from playfully fictional to outright ahistorical comes with the framing of the song “ Eat It ” as an original song rather than a parody of Michael Jackson’s “ Beat It ,” Within minutes of both audience and record label hearing this “new original song by Al Yankovic,” Jackson’s “Beat It” hits the radio, dashing his dreams of being taken seriously as an original artist, and resulting in the world believing that his song was a parody all along.

It’s a simple story beat, reminiscent of Yankovic’s minor 30 Rock cameo where Jenna Maroney attempts to write an “unparody-able” song to foil the artist, resulting in him creating a popular “serious” song instead. But the “Eat It” arc and its humor spawns an entirely new dramatic arc for the film. Yankovic’s commitment to his persona and brand is precisely what makes his screen appearances throughout pop culture so enjoyable, even when they’re as simple as playing a plain, “not weird” version of himself on Work in Progress . The actors in his biopic are equally committed to the straight-faced silliness that defines this movie.

Spotting all the cameos (often from famous actors or comedians playing different celebrities) contributes to the joy of the film, but Daniel Radcliffe’s turn as Yankovic grounds the story. Maybe “grounded” is the wrong word for a film featuring Weird Al meeting Queen Elizabeth II (whose death on the day of the film’s premiere at TIFF resulted in uproarious, slightly uncomfortable, laughter at the screening) and the notion that Weird Al could replace Roger Moore as James Bond. But everything the film does well comes back to Radcliffe’s performance.

In lieu of live vocals or covers, the actor purposefully and obviously lip-syncs to Weird Al’s actual voice, just one of many comic beats that the film throws at Radcliffe, who nails them expertly. It isn’t an individually great performance, exactly, but it perfectly captures the sincerity that has garnered many an actor an Oscar nod or nomination in the face of completely nonsensical storytelling and writing. Even the supporting performances, like Wood’s comically villainous Madonna, Julianne Nicholson’s occasionally cutting but mostly doting role as Yankovic’s mother, Mary, and Toby Huss as Nick, Yankovic’s working-class father who just can’t stand that accordion music, all feel ideally calculated to fit the pre-existing Behind the Music roles they’re playing off of.

In a realm where Walk Hard is often cited as the definitive work of music-biopic parody — both an expert satire of previous films like Walk the Line and Ray , and a sign of more to come with films like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, and even Baz Luhrmann’s inspired Elvis — it would be fairly easy to dismiss Weird: The Al Yankovic Story as nothing particularly special. But Yankovic’s attention to detail and embrace of the absurd is precisely what makes the film so intoxicatingly charming, even in the face of a script that sometimes feels like it’s simply a loose framework for delivering a wave of gags (not all of which will land for each viewer).

It’s an extended work of parody art that’s actually funny, and an extended return to comedy from someone who is something of a master at it. In a world where the man hasn’t released an album in eight years, it’s damn refreshing to have this cinematic ode to his specific brand of humor.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is now streaming free on the Roku Channel. Here’s how to watch it on any device.

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‘weird: the al yankovic story’ review: daniel radcliffe in infectiously silly biopic parody.

Mr. Yankovic himself co-writes the very untrue story of his life for Eric Appel's pic, which premiered at Toronto and is set to air on Roku.

By John DeFore

John DeFore

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A parody of rock biopics that celebrates its subject by completely trashing the facts of his life and career, Eric Appel’s Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is relentlessly silly, wholesome at heart and so stuffed with cameos it might give you the idea that a couple of generations of cool people love this guy.

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Finally making good on the faux movie trailer he released a dozen years ago, TV director Appel’s feature is almost exactly what the short promised, lifting bits from it practically verbatim. Aaron Paul played the singer back then, helping to sell the (totally invented) rock-star self-destructiveness the trailer hinted at; this time we get Daniel Radcliffe , whose sweetness makes Fake Al’s turn toward nasty behavior funnier, occasionally even poignant.

There, young Alfred’s odd interests were allowed to bear fruit. His three normal, cool-guy roommates encouraged him to find his own way of expressing himself, and accidentally helped him get started. One day, he’s making a sandwich for one of them as a new song by The Knack comes on the radio. As the refrain “My Sharona” drills into his head, our hero stares at a package of Oscar Meyer like an ape gazing into interstellar obsidian. “My Bologna” is born.

Overnight success is a myth. For Al, it was a same-day phenomenon. He goes out to mail a homemade cassette of his song to a DJ, and by the time he gets home it’s the most-requested song in town. Now he just needs to develop a live show, and attract the attention of a pun-loving mentor, the great Dr. Demento ( Rainn Wilson ).

(For the uninitiated: Dr. Demento was a real person, a DJ of novelty songs whose syndicated show was beloved by children who didn’t understand sports and thought that nearly cursing in a song was maybe the funniest thing ever. Evidently, some of us grew up to think that nearly cursing in a movie is pretty funny also. And he really did introduce the world to “Weird” Al.)

It turns out that his parodies are bigger hits than the songs they mock, and whenever he releases one, sales of the original song go through the roof as well. Enter an opportunistic young singer named Madonna. Evan Rachel Wood is a gum-smacking vixen here, sashaying into Al’s life as Mads and making him believe they’re soulmates. She starts the teetotaler drinking, nurtures his inner prima donna and eventually gets him mixed up with Pablo Escobar (Arturo Castro).

That last subplot will find the hirsute accordionist transforming first into John Wick, then into Rambo. But instead of morphing into an anything-goes genre sendup a la Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, Appel and Yankovic quickly get back to music, offering third-act familial surprises and the obligatory redemption narrative. Though it’s a tiny bit flabby in its second half, the movie knows how to race offstage when it’s ready, offering a genuine twist or two as it goes. It may not set the world on fire, as “Eat It” did, but Weird is a funny, welcome reminder of a time before the internet and Marvel made being a nerd so ordinary.

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‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ Review: Daniel Radcliffe Gets His Goof on in a Daffy-Droll Music Biopic That Skewers Its Hero and Itself

A knowingly over-the-top satirical biopic portrays "Weird Al" Yankovic as a geek who became an absurdly big star, but its central joke is that it understands he was just a scavenger.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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That the songs, in their silly new palm-buzzer versions, became hits all over again was the joke behind the joke. By stripping the original lyrics away but preserving the hookiness of the music, Weird Al (with apologies to music critics) revealed something essential about how pop music works — that the lyrics to more pop songs than most would admit are basically window dressing. The Weird Al version of a song might be about riding the bus, making a sandwich, or loving Rocky Road ice cream, but the song sounded nearly as catchy that way. The joke was on the original artists, and on us.

The secret of Weird Al’s success is that he may have been the first star of the YouTube/TikTok era — 30 years ahead of the invention of those things. Anyone today who did the equivalent of what Weird Al did back in the ’80s would now be a viral sensation. And part of what we loved about Weird Al is the transparent fact that he had a kind of showmanship that didn’t actually involve much talent. Many of the videos that get big on YouTube or TikTok are, in essence, aspirational; for the viewer, they carry an “I want to be that” or “If I play my cards right, that could be me” dimension. And that very quality, decades before we began amusing ourselves to death on social media, was baked into the goofy glory of “Weird Al” Yankovic.

The movie, directed by TV veteran Eric Apel, from a script he cowrote with Yankovic, doesn’t just satirize the rise-and-fall clichés of celebrity biopics, the way “Walk Hard” did; it lives the clichés even as it lampoons them. In this version of the story, Weird Al grows up in the ’70s with parents who are hilariously blinkered in their refusal to approve of his accomplishments. His mother, played by Julianne Nicholson (who, after “Blonde,” is cornering the market on oppressive moms), is a dowdy doomsayer, while his father (Toby Huss) is an angry crumbum factory worker who thinks Al should come to work at the factory — it’s a running joke that no one knows what the factory makes — and treats his son’s dream like a flower he wants to crush. When an accordion salesman drops by, Nick pounds the crap out of him, but not before Al has fastened onto the bulky hand-pumped organ keyboard as the instrument of his salvation.

Al attends a high-school polka party the film treats as a bacchanal, and he auditions for a punk band with his accordion version of “Beat on the Brat.” But it’s not until he comes up with “My Bologna” that the comic strategy of “Weird” clicks into place. The movie is going to be about how Al became a huge star — huger than he actually was, a megastar of mishegas.

Weird Al wasn’t a pop star, but he was a tall, gangly, and rather good-looking nerd who mocked his own handsomeness by decking it out in wire-frame aviator glasses, a sardine mustache, the ugliest Hawaiian shirts he could find, and that mop of curls. He used this costume of geek to tweak himself the same way his lyrics tweaked the songs. It feels right, at first, to see Daniel Radcliffe play Al as an earnest dork. But one of the good jokes of “Weird” is what a vast Hollywood-biopic arc his personality undergoes. Radcliffe does it expertly. He starts off as a wallflower, then turns into a guy who’s almost’s living in the shadow of his success, then embraces his celebrity, then meets Madonna ( Evan Rachel Wood ), who becomes his girlfriend, at which point he begins to enter his swelled-head phase.

The key moment is built around the song “Eat It.” Al seems to come up with it the same way he does his others, only now, in his egomania, he thinks it’s actually an original song. When Michael Jackson comes out with “Beat It,” Al — and the movie — treats it as if Al had been ripped off. But this casually surreal twist has a resonance to it. It’s Weird Al scathingly making fun of his own absurdly ripped-off art. It also figures neatly into the classic-biopic plot: Al needs to claim “originality” — to the point of insanity — because that’s how much his daddy’s rejection of him wounds him. “Weird” ridicules the way that biopics turn into therapeutic soap operas. Yet by the time Al heads down to Colombia to rescue Madonna from Pablo Escobar, the movie has nudged its hero’s rise to the point that he’s now a drug-thriller action star, all of which Radcliffe plays with poker-faced charisma.   

I can’t say that Evan Rachel Wood does the world’s best Madonna impersonation, but playing Madge in the mid-’80s, when she was first experiencing the majesty of her superstardom, Wood amusingly tweaks how Madonna was wired, in the smallest interactions, for self-promotion. “Weird,” in its frivolous way, turns into a riff on megalomania, as Weird Al has a getting-drunk-and-treating-his-bandmates-like-crap episode, then a Jim Morrison will-he-expose-himself-on-stage? episode. But there are limits to his rock vs. comedy star loyalty. When he’s told that the reunited Led Zeppelin want to open for him on tour, he’s almost insulted. He has already lined up Howie Mandel!

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival, Sept. 8, 2022. Running time: 108 MIN.

• Production: A The Roku Channel release of a Funny or Die, Tango Entertainment III, The Roku Channel production. Producers: Lia Buman, Mike Farah, Joe Farrell, Tim Headington, Whitney Hodack, Max Silva, “Weird Al” Yankovic. Executive producers: Eric Appel, Zachary Halley, Henry R. Munoz III, Neil Shah.
• Crew: Director: Eric Appel. Screenplay: Eric Apel, “Weird Al” Yankovic. Camera: Ross Riege. Editor: Jamie Kennedy. Music: Leo Birenberg, Zach Robinson, “Weird Al” Yankovic.
• With: Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson, Julianne Nicholson, Spencer Treat Clark, Quinta Brunson, James Preston Rogers, Will Forte, Toby Huss, Thomas Lennon, David Bloom.

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‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ Review: Daniel Radcliffe Becomes the Beloved Parody Musician

Vikram murthi.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. It will start streaming on the Roku Channel on Friday, November 4.

It’s certainly apropos that “Weird Al” Yankovic, a musician whose pronounced lack of self-seriousness has been a crucial part of his appeal and longevity, would filter his life through the music biopic, a genre infamous for its sober-minded, melodramatic efforts. What better way for the world’s preeminent parody musician to pay tribute to himself than by using his own life story to parody the biopic itself? While “ Weird: The Al Yankovic Story ,” co-written by Yankovic and director Eric Appel, broadly follows the beats of the three-minute Funny or Die fake trailer on which it’s based, the actual film riffs on Yankovic’s career to paint a portrait of the artist as a pop cultural renaissance man who can sell out stadiums, bed Madonna, and take on Pablo Escobar in just a few short years. Appel and Yankovic exaggerate, and then completely diverge from, the truth until their imitation of the real story is all that remains.

With that said, “Weird” can still be broadly split into semi-factual and off-the-rails sections. The first and more successful half follows Al, played by a committed Daniel Radcliffe , as a comedy and accordion-obsessed child contending with parents (Toby Huss and Julianne Nicholson) who disapprove of his musical ambitions. He eventually leaves home to attend college where his roommates, and future band members, encourage his dreams of becoming a parody artist. (“I want to make up words to a song that already exists,” Al tells his friends with almost religious conviction.) Not soon after he sends a tape of “My Bologna” into a local radio station, Al hooks up with broadcaster and comedy kingmaker Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson) who sets him on the path to stardom.

“Weird” certainly has fun heightening and abstracting the details of Yankovic’s rise to fame, but it’s great that Appel and Yankovic initially stick to the broad strokes of the story. Yankovic’s relationship with Dr. Demento, whose cult radio show specialized in novelty songs, was crucial to his early success. “My Bologna” was actually recorded in a bathroom to take advantage of the acoustics, though not a bus station bathroom where Al and his bandmates need to kick out patrons for privacy. Yankovic did actually record the Queen parody “Another One Rides the Bus” live, except not at a lavish party to prove his talent to DJ Wolfman Jack (Jack Black) in front of other “weird” artists like Pee-Wee Herman, Gallagher, and DEVO. They even included the detail of Yankovic’s drummer Jon “Bermuda” Schwartz (Tommy O’Brien) banging on his accordion case to keep a steady beat.

By even slightly hewing to the facts, “Weird” can improvise and digress in entertaining ways. Huss shines as Yankovic’s manically unsupportive father, who works “down at the factory,” a seemingly dangerous place whose output is a permanent mystery, and finds his son’s song parodies “confusing and evil.” Radcliffe nails the classic struck-by-inspiration expression as he stares at a package of bologna while “My Sharona” plays on the radio. In an oddly sweet scene, Al charms the grizzled whisky-and-heroin crowd at a hyper-violent punk bar with his first live performance of “I Love Rocky Road.” Arguably the film’s best and funniest scene features a teenaged Al secretly attending a “polka party” where he gets his first taste of acclaim before it’s broken up by the cops.

“Weird” ultimately takes a turn to gonzo fiction when it’s time for Al to record “Eat It,” one of his biggest hits. Except in the world of the film, “Eat It” is not a parody of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” but an original song, which Al writes to try to become a “serious” artist. When Jackson records his parody “Beat It,” it drives Al to madness and he views his hit like an albatross around his neck. (It’s unclear if this joke was merely designed to be absurd or if it falls in line with Yankovic’s recent decision to pull his Jackson parodies from his live show in the wake of the HBO documentary “Leaving Neverland.”) Around then, Al quickly falls under the spell of Madonna ( Evan Rachel Wood , doing a winning goofy impression of the pop star), whose quest for the “Yankovic bump” in record sales pushes her to ensnare Al and drive him to alcoholism until he’s magically struck with the inspiration to record “Like a Surgeon.”

As much as it’s fun to see Wood commit to the gum-snapping vixen role or a shirtless Radcliffe drunkenly screaming at fans about them being slaves, the second half of “Weird” feels disappointingly programmatic, ironically just like the second half of many biopics. Part of the problem simply lies with the film leaning into set pieces instead of gags and throwaway jokes, where the humor naturally thrives. But “Weird” also seems to detrimentally commit to a biopic’s standard emotional beats even as it briefly turns into an action film involving Colombian drug cartels before returning to the formula of a slightly askew comeback story. Appel and Yankovic might be parodying the inevitable father-son reconciliation scenes in spurts but they’re still making us watch it at length. At some point, “Weird” feels like it’s going through the motions despite ostensibly subverting those motions.

Despite “Weird” inevitably biting off more than it can chew, the actual performances of Yankovic’s hit songs have a comfortable nostalgia factor and the various inside jokes to his career will certainly delight the “Weird Al” fanatic. (Watch out for references to Coolio and Prince, two artists who respectively objected to and rejected Yankovic’s cheeky homages.) Unlike Jake Kasdan’s “Walk Hard,” who took dead aim at the genre through the fictional Dewey Cox, a walking amalgamation of 20th century musicians, “Weird” sets its sights differently by embracing the inherent nicheness of its subject. “Weird” might operate within a familiar mold, but it ultimately affirms that Yankovic, despite being a fundamentally parasitic artist, carved an endearingly strange path all on his own.

“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” premiered at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. It will be released on The Roku Channel on Friday, November 4.

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‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ review: Daniel Radcliffe rips up the music movie rulebook

This is no glitzy Hollywood blockbuster, expect quirk, cameos and quite a lot that didn't happen

G lossy, grandiose and with a tendency to brush over their subjects’ worst moments, the Hollywood music biopic has become big business over the past five years. In that time we’ve had Queen , Elton John , Aretha Franklin , Billie Holiday and David Bowie , with films about Whitney Houston , Bob Dylan and Dolly Parton on the way. In fact, so frequent have these movies become, that it’s easy to imagine a studio exec with a clipboard somewhere ticking off a long list of aging stars, dollar signs spinning in their eyes as they go. One name you wouldn’t expect to get the cash register chiming though, is ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic .

Starring Daniel Radcliffe as the titular parody songsmith, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story  makes for the perfect antidote to modern popstar blockbusters. For starters, very little of it is actually true. Alright, Yankovic was inspired to learn the accordion by a door-to-door salesman. But his father definitely didn’t beat the guy half-to-death afterwards. Yes, he did zoom up the charts in the ‘80s with spoof renditions of Michael Jackson ’s ‘Beat It’ (‘Eat It’) and ‘Like A Virgin’ (‘Like A Surgeon’) by Madonna . He never met Madge for more than 30 seconds though – and absolutely did not date her.

Yankovic has made tons of cash out of being extremely silly – so it makes sense that the film of his life is too. After a half-believable intro section which follows Yankovic’s white picket fence upbringing in smalltown America, Weird gets progressively more surreal until a now-famous, drug-addicted, alcoholic Al emerges naked from a giant egg on stage, covered in goo and playing electric guitar to thousands of screaming fans. The rest of the film details his return to sobriety – including other bizarre highlights such as a birthday party shootout with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar; Al’s top-hatted mentor Doctor Demento (played by Rainn Wilson); and a John Wick-style fight sequence in a diner. It’s loads of fun, and often very funny too.

Radcliffe, who looks nothing like Yankovic, is clearly enjoying himself. He’s purposely chosen oddball projects to work on since Harry Potter, playing a sentient, farting corpse in 2016 comedy Swiss Army Man and a character who wakes up to find he has guns bolted to his hands for 2019’s Guns Akimbo . Here he takes those eccentric tendencies to another level opposite an all-star cast of stellar comic talent including Jack Black, Patton Oswalt, Quinta Brunson and, unexpectedly, Evan Rachel Wood, whose scheming Madonna is a hilarious surprise.

Occasionally, it all gets a bit too on the nose. The constant mock-veneration of Al’s lyrical prowess is overdone – and co-writer Yankovic’s desperate need to show he’s in on the joke quickly grows tiresome. And yet, Radcliffe’s winning performance – like a goofy high-schooler who wins the lottery – is enough to keep everyone laughing. Top that off with an album’s worth of quirky cameos, including Conan O’Brien’s genuinely laugh-out-loud Andy Warhol impression, and you’ve got a cult classic in the making. M-m-m-myyy bologna!

• Director: Eric Appel
• Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson
• Release date: November 4 (The Roku Channel)
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• Aretha Franklin
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Why Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Reviews Are So Positive

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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is getting great reviews and is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86 percent score. Weird Al is synonymous with music parodies, so it only makes sense that a movie about his life would be a parody of other musician biopics, and critics are praising both the humor and heart of the finished product.

While Weird Al has been making popular parodies for over 40 years, his unique brand of zany humor doesn't necessarily cater to broad appeal. His last movie, UHF, saw mediocre reviews and a poor box office in 1989, so the critical success of Weird: The Al Yankovic is a good sign. Starring Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al and featuring a slew of other big cameos from big-name celebrities, Weird: The Al Yankovic reviews say it's as crazy as anyone could expect from a fictional biopic about the most famous parody maker.

Related: Weird Al Yankovic Movie True Story: How Much Really Happened

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Positive Reviews

The reviews for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story are praising the movie's humor, which is described as "crazy," a "fever dream," and "ridiculous," but most reviews also say the movie still manages to bring the story back to a sweet, charming place in the end. The cast gets particular praise, including a swathe of surprise celebrity cameos. Critics say the movie swings for the fences, and even if that means it's too ambitious at times, that's all a part of the Weird Al charm. Here are a few examples:

"Weird is an absolutely charming and often hilarious look at the world’s greatest parody musician, packed with an excellent cast that wants to pay tribute to this weird man. Weird dares to be stupid and succeeds because of it."

"Weird Al” Yankovic is an entertaining biopic about the eccentric musician who rose to fame remaking other artist's music by rewriting the lyrics.

"Even if it's not as bold as it could have been, Weird is still endearing and fun to watch, full of classic Weird Al songs and tons of celebrity cameos."

Entertainment Weekly

"An alternative-facts fever dream so bent on the certifiably ridiculous that it circles back around somehow to sweetness."

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Mixed or Negative Reviews

While the majority of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story reviews are positive , there are some more mixed, or even a few negative reactions. Some critics say the movie can get a little too crazy and become tedious or tiresome by the end. Most critics tend to agree that the movie is ambitious, although some of the more negative reactions say it ultimately bites off more than it can chew and simply "runs out of gas" by the end. Despite these complaints, many of the reviews are still positive, with only a few being counted as "Rotten" in Rotten Tomatoes.

"Despite “Weird” inevitably biting off more than it can chew, the actual performances of Yankovic’s hit songs have a comfortable nostalgia factor and the various inside jokes to his career will certainly delight the “Weird Al” fanatic."

The Daily Beast

"Sure, it’s clever at first, but after a while it starts to feel like you’re watching yet another tiresome biopic that hits the same beats as every other biopic—except this one is supposed to be fake and funny."

Screen Daily

"Unlike Yankovic's best songs, this spoof's inspired goofiness eventually runs out of gas, growing more and more outrageous without coming up with comparably choice gags."

Chicago Sun Times

"Eric Appel’s admirably ambitious and intermittently inspired funhouse take on Yankovic’s life and times runs out of gas well before the finish line."

Despite the few detractors saying movie's charm doesn't make it to the finish line, the vast majority of critics agree the musical biopic parody is both funny and endearing, like the notorious nice guy, Weird Al , himself. As always, reviews are subjective, so take any critic reaction with a grain of salt, but with 87 percent from critics and 90 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, it would seem Weird: The Al Yankovic story is a hit with viewers across the board.

Next: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Ending Explained (In Detail)

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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story review – Daniel Radcliffe is pitch-perfect in an artfully absurd music ‘biopic’

This is one of those rare but precious comedies that works because of how faithfully it commits to the bit, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Eric Appel. Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Jack Black, Rainn Wilson, Toby Huss, Julianne Nicholson, Quinta Brunson. 108 minutes.

I’ve often heard it said that 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ruined the music biopic for good. Jake Kasdan’s parodic riff on the genre’s conventions – the troubled childhood, the meteoric rise to fame, the parade of famous faces, the inevitable seduction to the dark side of drink and drugs – felt devastatingly precise. And it can be hard now to watch a scene of any bright young thing nervously ingesting their first narcotic without thinking of Tim Meadows’ Sam and his repeated refrain: “Get out of here, Dewey. You don’t want no part of this s***!”

But I’d disagree with the notion that Walk Hard , as brilliant as it is, marks some be-all and end-all of stories about musicians. The music biopics released since haven’t paid all that much mind to the film’s humiliations. Some of them, including this year’s Elvis , can tick off every cliché and still soar. Even the parodies are alive and well, thanks to mockumentaries like Documentary Now! , Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping and, now, the artfully absurd Weird: The Al Yankovic Story .

Weird was co-written by director Eric Appel and Yankovic himself, the parody musician who blazed through the Eighties and Nineties with riffs on popular songs: “Eat It”; “Like a Surgeon”; “Amish Paradise”. It expands on a three-minute fake movie trailer published by Funny or Die in 2010 and featuring only a sprinkling of truth to it, while adding Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, looking absolutely nothing like the real Yankovic. The punchline goes like this: what if Yankovic, one of the most wholesome and silly musicians to have ever lived, had the same rollercoaster story of fame and excess to tell as Johnny Cash, Freddie Mercury or Ray Charles? The rest almost writes itself. His mother (Julianne Nicholson) finds Hawaiian shirts, Yankovic’s trademark, hidden away in his childhood bedroom. His father (Toby Huss) denounces the idea of putting new lyrics to existing songs as “confusing and evil”. He sneaks away from home to attend an illicit polka party that’s broken up by cops.

But Al eventually finds a mentor in the form of Dr Demento (Rainn Wilson), a real-life comedy disk jockey key to Yankovic’s early success, and becomes the most famous musician in the world with barely a squeeze of his trusty accordion. Weird is one of those rare but precious comedies that works because of how faithfully it commits to the bit. Corruptive feminine temptation comes in the form of Evan Rachel Wood ’s perfectly outsized Madonna, who pushes the tired sexism of the “Yoko Ono-type” to such an extreme that it exposes its inherent ludicrousness – the film ends on the title card “Madonna Ciccone is still at large”. At one point, Yankovic becomes the world’s most deadly assassin and goes head-to-head with Pablo Escobar (Arturo Castro). A conveyor belt of recognisable comedians speed by, there only to deliver a couple of killer lines or their best impressions of Andy Warhol or Salvador Dali.

Radcliffe, who remains movie-star ripped for the film’s duration, is a genius casting choice. He has pitch-perfect comic timing without necessarily coming across as someone trying to tell a joke. There’s a real sincerity to him and he has the eager grin of a Broadway performer about to take their bow. Yankovic is first inspired to write “My Bologna” when he spies a packet of luncheon meat while The Knack’s “My Sharona” plays on the radio. The back-and-forth shots – meat, face, meat, face – are stretched out to the point of hilarity. But Radcliffe’s straight-laced delivery of that moment is basically inseparable from what Rami Malek was doing in Bohemian Rhapsody . Walk Hard didn’t exhaust our ability to make fun of that kind of self-important filmmaking. There’s plenty of room for Weird , too.

‘Weird: The Al Yankovic Story’ streams on The Roku Channel from 4 November

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REVIEW: Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Amusingly Parodies Musical Biopics

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It may sound unlikely, but the biggest problem with Weird: The Al Yankovic story is that it isn't weird enough. The biopic about musical parodist "Weird Al" Yankovic is itself a parody, amusingly making fun of the conventions of biographical movies about musicians. It's at its best when it goes beyond that specific mockery, though, into completely oddball territory that recalls Yankovic's only previous cinematic outing, the 1989 cult classic UHF . Movies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping have already effectively satirized the self-importance of rock-star biopics, leaving Weird with fairly limited new territory to explore. Weird embraces the silliness of its subject and is full of appealingly goofy humor, but it never quite lives up to its potential.

Yankovic has been a pop-culture figure for nearly 40 years, with hit parodies ranging from "Eat It" and "Fat" to "Amish Paradise" and "White and Nerdy," and he's an influence on generations of comedians and filmmakers. That level of goodwill helped make Funny or Die's 2010 mock trailer for Weird into a viral sensation, and Yankovic teams up with the director of that sketch, Eric Appel, for the feature-length version. As numerous movies based on Saturday Night Live characters have demonstrated, it's not easy to translate a three-minute sketch into a successful feature film, although Weird benefits from drawing on the established biopic template.

RELATED: Daniel Radcliffe's Al Yankovic Biopic Trailer Introduces Sex, Drugs and Madonna

Although Yankovic himself starred in UHF , he has only a small role in Weird as a disapproving record executive. Instead, Al is played by Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, the latest in Radcliffe's ongoing series of enjoyably offbeat roles. Radcliffe throws himself into the part, giving it just as much effort and enthusiasm as any other role he's played. He's outfitted in the recognizable curly hair, mustache, glasses, and Hawaiian shirts of Yankovic's early career, but he still doesn't much resemble the actual guy. That's part of the joke since Weird only barely resembles any elements of Yankovic's actual life and career, instead using him as a jumping-off point to make fun of the seriousness of music biopics.

Just like countless other artists whose life stories have been told in narrative films, this Al has a troubled childhood, with parents who disapprove of his passions and discourage him from pursuing his dreams. His stern father, Nick (Toby Huss), works at "the factory" and seemingly has a vendetta against both accordions and the idea of humorously changing the lyrics to popular songs. When young Al comes up with his first parody, changing "Amazing Grace" into "Amazing Grapes," both of his parents are appalled. Then, when a traveling accordion salesman (Thomas Lennon) shows up to the Yankovic house, Nick beats him within an inch of his life.

RELATED: How Daniel Radcliffe Landed the Weird Al Role Is as Strange as You Would Think

That's the kind of absurdity that signals just how weird Weird is going to be, although it still dutifully hits all the biopic beats as Al leaves home and begins his musical career. He gets convenient inspiration for his first major parody, "My Bologna" (based on The Knack's "My Sharona"), and meets a mentor in comedy radio DJ Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson). Those disapproving record executives, played by Yankovic and Will Forte, soon change their perspectives, and Al rockets up the charts in what seems like a week or so -- just like what happens in other music biopics.

Although the real Yankovic is known for his pleasant demeanor and scandal-free life, Weird 's version of Al becomes a rock-star train wreck just as quickly as he became a success, fueled by his (entirely fictional) romance with pop megastar Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood). Within hours of meeting, they've declared their love for each other, alienated Al's bandmates and his mentor, and embarked on a musical collaboration that begins with Al's parody of Madonna's "Like a Virgin," "Like a Surgeon." The former teetotaler has become a raging alcoholic, destroying his life in a blaze of hedonism.

RELATED: Daniel Radcliffe Jokes That the Weird Al Biopic Is a Harry Potter Parody

While the Madonna relationship could have just been one episode in a series of trysts, Yankovic and Appel make it into the center of the movie, with Wood doing a spot-on impersonation of 1980s Madonna. The more Madonna turns into a diabolical villain, the more counterfactual Weird becomes, heading into delightfully bizarre plot detours that culminate in a shootout at the headquarters of notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar ( Broad City 's Arturo Castro). The Escobar sequence is Weird 's highlight, resembling some of the absurdist sequences from UHF . Whenever Weird circles back to the biopic formula, it's amusing but a bit obvious, and it could have used more of these completely unhinged deviations.

Even if it's not as bold as it could have been, Weird is still endearing and fun to watch, full of classic Weird Al songs -- with Yankovic himself providing the vocals -- and tons of celebrity cameos. Even people like Conan O'Brien or Abbott Elementary 's Quinta Brunson, who only show up to deliver a few lines, give it their full comedic effort, matching Radcliffe in his commitment to the ridiculousness. Huss and Julianne Nicholson play it admirably straight as Al's parents, adding deadpan humor to the scenes of exaggerated family drama. Weird closes with a new song from Yankovic, "Now You Know," riffing on biopics and fame and everything that the audience has just seen. It demonstrates that Yankovic's musical comedy chops are as sharp as ever, with decades of his career left to explore -- and mock. Bring on Weird 2 .

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story premieres Friday, Nov. 4 on The Roku Channel.

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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Review

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

“Weird Al” Yankovic has been around for so long (his career began in 1976, aged just 16) that it’s easy to overlook that moniker: he really is quite weird, isn’t he? Think of Yankovic and a bizarre melting pot of trademarks comes to mind: the perm, the Hawaiian shirts, the virtuoso accordion-playing, the wild-eyed stare — and, fundamentally, a career’s worth of delightfully demented spoof songs, from ‘Like A Surgeon’ to ‘Amish Paradise’.

It makes perfect sense, then, that the first film to tell the allegedly true story of his life is also brilliantly weird, and that a man whose career is built on parody would make a film so wholeheartedly dedicated to taking the piss. It feels true to Yankovic’s eccentric spirit, and it’s made with his full participation (he co-wrote the script, and cameos as a hard-nosed record executive, practically winking to the camera as he berates his on-screen avatar).

At its peak, it has the absurdity and joke-rate of a Naked Gun film — apt, given Yankovic made memorable cameos in all three. Every element is considered fair game, and that go-for-broke silliness is effervescently enjoyable, especially given the recent lull in big-screen comedy.

A ludicrous awards-show climax reminds us that this is a project with a sense of humour to match its subject matter.

Daniel Radcliffe — now surely as famous for playing skinheads and farting corpses as he is boy wizards — hungrily takes on the Yankovic mantle, committing to the deadpan delivery of ridiculous dialogue, and throwing himself into the musical sequences, even if it’s the real Yankovic singing. His Yankovic is not the humble, clean-living jokester of real life, but an ambitious, alpha-male sex symbol (for Yankovic, a self-deprecatingly fanciful notion).

Director Eric Appel — who was also behind the original Funny Or Die sketch on which the film is based — leaves no music-biopic cliché unturned. There is a difficult relationship with parents who just don’t understand (see also: Rocketman , Walk The Line ). There is a eureka moment, where inspiration strikes Yankovic and he writes ‘My Bologna’ (see also: Bohemian Rhapsody ’s ‘We Will Rock You’ moment). There is a descent into drink and drugs (see also: basically all of them). The running joke throughout is that Yankovic is hailed as a preternatural genius simply for replacing existing song lyrics with new ones. In this goofy reality, he’s bigger than the Beatles.

If it compares favourably to something like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story , that early energy isn’t quite sustained into the third act. Yankovic’s imagined relationship with Madonna — gamely played by a gum-chewing Evan Rachel Wood , funnier than she’s ever been — doesn’t hang together as well as it could. But a ludicrous awards-show climax reminds us that this is a project with a sense of humour to match its subject matter. In essence: it’s weird. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Should Have Been Weirder

Fictional movies involving real-life people often begin with a disclaimer telling us that what we are about to watch is not technically true. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story begins — at least, in the version currently streaming on the Roku Channel — with “Weird Al” Yankovic himself confidently assuring us that everything in the movie is 100 percent accurate. Which is of course a very Weird Al thing to do. The insistence itself serves as the disclaimer.

What then proceeds is a completely fanciful mock biopic in which we see young Al Yankovic (played as an adult by Daniel Radcliffe) wounded by his working-stiff father’s (Toby Huss) refusal to let him follow his dream of making up fake lyrics to existing pop songs. He rebels and learns to play the accordion in secret, becoming the outlaw toast of his town’s wild teenage “polka parties.” He then shoots to megastardom on the strength of his musical parodies, which become more popular than the actual hits themselves. He pivots to writing his own original songs, which are so huge that big artists start parodying him . (In Weird ’s version of events, Weird Al had a runaway hit with “Eat It” first and then an opportunistic Michael Jackson copied him with “Beat It.”) Then he spirals into alcoholism and violence and self-importance, as one does. All along, he still yearns for his stern father’s love.

It of course makes sense that a Weird Al biopic would simply be a spoof of other music biopics. Not just because parody is his whole thing, but also because, well, the true story of his rise doesn’t appear to have been all that interesting or full or filled with movie-worthy drama. In some ways, the most touching aspect of Weird is that it presents us with a vision of all the things that could have gone off the rails in the real Al Yankovic’s life. What if his parents were stridently unsupportive of his chosen profession? What if his father had a psychopathic hatred of accordions? What if he succumbed to fame and addiction? What if Pablo Escobar was creepily obsessed with him? What if he had a lengthy affair with Madonna?

It’s funny on paper, I guess. And some of it is funny in execution. There are bits here that work marvelously: Thomas Lennon’s turn as a traveling accordion salesman who is beaten to a bloody pulp by Al’s father; a scene at a pool party where Jack Black as Wolfman Jack and David Dastmalchian as Queen bassist John Deacon challenge our hero to an on-the-spot parody of “Another One Bites the Dust” (after conceding defeat, Wolfman Jack is tased and removed from the event); a throwaway shot of Coolio fuming in the audience after “Amish Paradise” wins a Grammy. The film is a Funny or Die production, which is perhaps why it never transcends its sketch-comedy DNA. I can imagine laughing at any five minutes of the movie, but I found it disappointingly hard to laugh at 108 minutes of it.

That said, Daniel Radcliffe certainly impresses with his commitment to the role. His Weird Al is intense, driven, and ripped, which actually carries some whiff of authenticity; in his heyday, the real Weird Al’s superpower was that he always committed to the bit. Radcliffe takes that idea to another level, and you can genuinely imagine that a figure this passionate could spiral into violence and self-destruction. The actor, through his performance, makes the necessary intuitive connections that the otherwise half-hearted script, credited to Yankovic and director Eric Appel, refuses to.

The problem with Weird is that it’s just … not that weird. Maybe, in a universe where Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping (and any number of other fake biopics) didn’t exist, Weird might have felt more novel, more transgressive. But weirdness, as a concept, does not exist in a vacuum; it exists in relation to other things, and in Weird ’s case the others got there first, many times over. You can recognize echoes of other comedies — Zoolander , Anchorman , Talladega Nights , etc. — not all of which were even all that original in the first place. As a result, one keeps wanting the picture to go in stranger and bolder directions. To be fair, it feels like it’s at least attempting that in its second half, when it strays into action-movie territory. But is that really all that weird? We’ve had even more action spoofs than we’ve had biopic spoofs, no? All too often, it feels like Appel and Yankovic are going for distressingly low-hanging fruit, and the movie runs out of juice the longer it goes on.

Among the things that made Weird Al’s songs so special were their ingenuity and unpredictability. Over and over, he surprised you with his rhymes and with the settings of his parodies. Remember, the original songs he was poking fun at were massive hits. Any teenage jackass could have come up with fake lyrics for these songs — and, as I recall, many of us did. But Weird Al was smarter than us, at every turn. Even if you didn’t care all that much for joke songs, it was hard not to appreciate a verse like: Our prices are low, my staff is underpaid / You can buy off the rack or have it custom-made / And it’s all guaranteed to never shrink or fade / ’Cause of my reputation as the King of Suede. This fake Weird Al movie could have used some of the real Weird Al’s cleverness. Weird doesn’t feel like a parody; it feels like an impostor.

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David Dastmalchian on landing a joke surrounded by comedy icons in Weird : 'I crapped my pants, man'

"I was like, you've got to land the joke. I've got to land a joke."

David Dastmalchian is having a big year. He's popped up in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania , Boston Strangler , The Boogeyman , and Oppenheimer , and he's got a big role in the new Dracula film The Last Voyage of the Demeter . But the recent role that just about made him soil himself? That was a cameo in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story .

In a recent interview with Slash Film , the veteran character actor looked back on the star-studded pool scene in the film about "Weird" Al Yankovic.

"If you can imagine being an actor not known for being funny, who isn't particularly funny, who is a character actor that has brought to life maybe some pretty oddball characters, but definitely not in the comedic space," Dastmalchian said, "walking through a set where I'm going past Emo Philips as Salvador Dalí and Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol and Jack Black as Wolfman Jack, and you've got the Lonely Island guys there and Paul F. Tompkins. And it seemed like every funny person in the world is in this poolside set. I mean, Nina West is there as Divine. It was out of control."

What made it so nerve-racking was that among all the heavy hitters, Dastmalchian had the punchline for the scene. "I was so baffled that Al, because I'm friends with Al and he had asked me if I would do this part," he said. "When I got there and realized what was going on, I crapped my pants, man."

He continued: "I was like, you've got to land the joke. I've got to land a joke. And I'm surrounded by people who professionally land jokes every five minutes and are really good at it. So I guess, to me, it was the first time we really buttoned that scene and they yelled 'cut,' and Jack Black gave me a big hug and a high-five and thought it was funny."

The scene proves Dastmalchian has some versatility and backs up his claim in the interview that he'd make a great Bond villain. Hard to disagree there.

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Daniel Radcliffe Conjures Up His First Tony

“Merrily We Roll Along” is Radcliffe’s fifth show on Broadway, but the first for which he was even nominated for a Tony Award.

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Daniel Radcliffe Wins First Tony for ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

Daniel radcliffe, who starred in the “harry potter” films, won the tony award for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical..

“And the Tony Award goes to Charlie Kringas himself, Daniel Radcliffe.” “This is just, it’s been unbelievable. Thank you so much to our cast. Everybody on that stage, it is an honor to be on stage with you every single night. And to — yeah, I will just, I will miss it so much. Speaking of missing things; Jonathan, Lindsay, I will miss you so much. I don’t really have to act in this show. I just have to look at you and I feel everything that I want to feel. I will never have it this good again.”

By Michael Paulson

• June 16, 2024

Daniel Radcliffe is one of the world’s most famous actors. But he’s never won a major award. Until now.

Radcliffe won the Tony Award for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a musical, for his work in the smash hit revival of “ Merrily We Roll Along .” The show is Radcliffe’s fifth on Broadway, but the first for which he was even nominated for a Tony, despite mostly admiring reviews all along the way.

Radcliffe, 34, will forever be known as the actor who played the title wizard in all eight “Harry Potter” films. But even before shooting of those films concluded, he had begun making the adventurous choices — onstage and onscreen — that have helped him accomplish the rare transition from child star to respected adult actor.

In “Merrily,” Radcliffe plays Charley Kringas, a lyricist-turned-playwright whose long friendship and collaboration with a talented composer (a character named Franklin Shepard, played by Jonathan Groff) has imploded.

Radcliffe’s enormous star power is a significant factor in the success of this production, which promises to forever alter how “Merrily” is viewed because the show’s original production, in 1981, was a storied flop.

Radcliffe has been with the production since 2022, when he played the same role, with the same co-stars, during an Off Broadway run at the nonprofit New York Theater Workshop. The Broadway production opened last October , and is scheduled to conclude on July 7.

He has repeatedly shown a willingness to try new things. Radcliffe first arrived on Broadway in 2008, starring in a revival of “ Equus ” that required him to appear nude ; his next role, in a 2011 revival of the musical “ How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying ,” required him to sing.

He has since returned to Broadway to star in two more plays, “ The Cripple of Inishmaan ” in 2014 and “ The Lifespan of a Fact ” in 2018, and he also starred in an Off Broadway play, “ Privacy ,” in 2016 at the Public Theater.

He has continued to make movies, many of them indie-ish projects including “ Kill Your Darlings ,” “ Swiss Army Man ” and “ Weird: The Al Yankovic Story .”

In an interview last month, two days after being nominated for the Tony Award, Radcliffe said that he keeps returning to the stage “because I love it.”

“There’s something thrilling about doing something that scares you, live, a bit, every night,” he said. “And just the connection with the audience — being in a room full of people and feeling them react to the story. We’re very lucky it’s such an emotional show: There’s a lot laughs, and there’s a lot of comedy, but you can also hear people being emotionally affected by it towards the end, and that’s a very rewarding thing to be a part of.”

Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times. More about Michael Paulson