Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

As anyone will expect this is not going to be straightforward from a man who has spent most of his career subverting and parodying the rock world.

It’s basically a faux bio in which Yankovic parodies the rock documentary while at the same time subverting his own material and life. It flies all over the place and a times is over-indulgent but when it hits is hits hard and is very funny.

The parody of his parody of Michael Jackson's Beat It will probably be the most familiar. But he goes further into the ludicrousness of the business with hilarious business meetings and celeb parties full of cosplayers who look nothing like the real people.

Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) takes some heavy punches as she is portrayed as little more than a manipulative ambitious user. However its Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al that is the hit, though not a revelation as he's proved to be a very game and decent comic performer. This performance is on the wackier side of things though he does lace Al with a strange pathetic sympathy.

The film goes off the rails a touch when it gets into crime gangs and drug warlords and you get the feeling that this maybe a bit too earnest.
It’s one of those films that the more familiar you are with the workings of music industry, the more you may get out of it, nodding at the antics of managers, record companies and the inevitable drug problem.

The take on the notorious Jim Morrison strip is brilliant, which may go over the heads of some viewers. And that suggests that director Eric Appel, co-written with Weird Al, are unashamedly looking at Weird Al's contemporaries as the target audience, rather than try to pander to the current generation. But featuring cross-generational behemoths such as Madonna and Jackson it’s unlikely that anyone will be truly left wondering what is going on during the film.

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is available now on Roku Channel