Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) adopts its subjects modus operandi and applies it to the biopic. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story dismantles the tropes and narrative beats of films like Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) with broad comical strokes. While the effect of this endeavor yields some genuinely funny moments, this satirical film feels like a fake trailer off of Saturday Night Live except that it’s the “fake feature film”.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story opts to bypass a more nuanced cultural commentary by turning public figures and artists into caricatures. Contemporary talents such as Demetri Martin, Jack Black, Conan O’Brien, Emo Philips, and Lin-Manuel Miranda portray people like Andy Warhol, Wolfman Jack, and Salvador Dali as props in a comedy sketch. Throughout the film a variety of other prominent figures of the eighties like Elvira, Pee-Wee, and Frank Zappa are peppered in the mise en scène. Stripped of their history and distilled to their basic cultural capital, these eminent figures act as little more than signposts that the titular character has “made it”. This would all be well and good if Weird: The Al Yankovic Story didn’t reiterate this reflexive joke time and again.
What really doesn’t work in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is the vilifying of Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood). In Weird: The Al Yankovic Story Madonna is depicted as a driven, career minded artist who is willing to use her sexuality in order to further her own success. For this she is labeled a “succubi” and depicted as a destructive influence on Yankovic (Daniel Radcliffe). The filmmakers invented the relationship between Yankovic and Madonna in order to create a villain for the film. The troubling part of all of this is that the screenwriters couldn’t be bothered to imagine a villain who wasn’t an independent woman.
The most admirable aspect of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is actor Daniel Radcliffe’s performance. It isn’t a great performance, but it’s clear that Radcliffe is committed to growing beyond the character of Harry Potter as an actor. Unfortunately, the filmmakers decided to go the route of The Jolson Story (1946) and have Radcliffe lip sync to Weird Al’s original recordings. This doesn’t hurt the bold artifice of the film and its on the nose style of satire but it does lend the film an uncanny quality.
With the exception of Daniel Radcliffe and Weird Al fans there isn’t much to recommend Weird: The Al Yankovic Story. In fifteen minutes the film has accomplished all it can and is already overstaying its welcome. It doesn’t even have the benefit of a film like Wired (1989) where it’s so insane and aesthetically tasteless that it becomes a fascinating train wreck. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is ultimately boring.
