I saw "Walk Hard" at a preview last Thursday.
It was O.K. Maybe my hopes were too high. I don't know. I don't HATE the Judd Apatow/Will Ferrell axis of shtick but I certainly think they're overrated. I'm not sure I laughed at all at "40 Year-Old Virgin." The Apatow hype reminds a lot of what happened after "There's Something About Mary" with the Farrelly brothers. "It's RAUNCHY but HILARIOUS!" I think I'll pass. I passed on "Knocked Up" and "Superbad." I can say with confidence that I believe I could have predicted 80% of the jokes in those movies. Am I missing something? Is Judd Apatow REALLY producing hilarious films? I don't get it. Maybe I just don't have a sense of humor.
Back to "Walk Hard." Apparently, the preview audience on Thursday, which was quite large, contained more people than the entire audience opening weekend. It bombed pretty badly. Has anyone else seen it? Rock biopics like "Ray" and "Walk the Line" are so silly and ripe for parody but most of the jokes in this you could see coming. The funniest bits were the sly ones (the lyrics of some of the songs) as opposed to the obvious set pieces (The Beatles played by Jack Black, Jason Schwartzman, Paul Rudd and the Apple/Accepted/Die Hard 4 dude.)
The other thing I have to rant about is this development that I guess is the product of the DVD age. I guess movies today are just a free-for-all in terms of length because so much extra stuff can be released on DVD. But if several of the scenes that are in a thirty second trailer for film aren't in the released version, isn't that false advertising? The part where Dewey Cox is on a sail boat in the trailer isn't in the movie and the part where he punches Patrick Duffy isn't in the released version, either. I guess there will be an extended, (funnier) version of the movie released in a couple of months.
Brian
P.S. The worse case of this was "Anchorman." About 40% of what's in the trailer isn't in the released version.
They had so much unused footage they made an entire other film. But that doesn't change the fact that most of the trailer isn't in the film. Maybe they could have taken both and made one good film out it.
P.P.S. I'll admit Scary Movie/Epic Movie/etc. done in a week parodies are just as bad, but when they hit, they REALLY hit. The best parody of this sort I've ever seen was "Not Another Teen Movie." I thought that was hilarious. Maybe because movies like "Ten Things I Hate About You," "American Pie" and "Can't Hardly Wait" are so unintentionally funny to begin with.
