"Weird" is... Just Too Weird
Jan. 4th, 2023 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerA few weeks ago we watched "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story". It's available streaming for free on the Roku channel. How was it? Well, it was... just too weird. I hated it.
I know that's a strong statement. You might think, "Well, you just don't 'get' parody." (BTW, if you think that you have no clue about me.) Let me contextualize it.
I loved Weird Al's music since 1984, when "Eat It", his parody of Michael Jackson's hit "Beat It", came out. I heard it on the radio, and it was like a revelation to me. Music could be funny! And not just slapstick or bathroom humor funny, but poke-fun-at-things-that-people-hold-sacred funny. I.e., satire.
I told all my friends at school about it. At first nobody knew what it was. They all cracked up laughing when I repeated some of the lyrics, though. Soon more of us heard it on the radio— but not very often. I got bold and called a DJ to play it so my friends and family could all hear it.
I remained a fan of Weird Al's parodies for years. I bought a few of his albums. I eagerly watched the movie UHF (1989) as soon as I found out Yankovic wrote & starred in it. I think when I rented it on VHS I watched it 3 times in one weekend, then rented it again 9 months later.
Thus I was pretty primed to see "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story." Perhaps because of the title (which I took literally) I expected it to be a biography. A funny biography, to be sure; and likely parodying the biopic genre, as parody is at the heart of what Weird Al does. And that's where my dislike for the movie spawned.
You see, Weird is not a biography. It starts out as a sort of parody/biography, taking satirical liberties with the truth— which is exactly what I was expecting— but then gradually becomes completely unmoored from reality. Pretty soon it's a Weird Al self glorification fest on LSD, and it's not amusing.
Among the run-on jokes I found tedious:
As I sat through to the end of the movie I was reminded of what a writing teacher said to one of my classmates years ago about his absurdist comedy story written in the fashion of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "John," he said— I think his name was John— "Your story is like a hot air balloon with no ropes. It rises and it's beautiful. But it's not moored to the ground of reality. It starts floating away, further and further away from reality, until the audience can't make sense of it anymore."
"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" is that untethered balloon floating farther and farther away.
I know that's a strong statement. You might think, "Well, you just don't 'get' parody." (BTW, if you think that you have no clue about me.) Let me contextualize it.
I loved Weird Al's music since 1984, when "Eat It", his parody of Michael Jackson's hit "Beat It", came out. I heard it on the radio, and it was like a revelation to me. Music could be funny! And not just slapstick or bathroom humor funny, but poke-fun-at-things-that-people-hold-sacred funny. I.e., satire.I told all my friends at school about it. At first nobody knew what it was. They all cracked up laughing when I repeated some of the lyrics, though. Soon more of us heard it on the radio— but not very often. I got bold and called a DJ to play it so my friends and family could all hear it.
I remained a fan of Weird Al's parodies for years. I bought a few of his albums. I eagerly watched the movie UHF (1989) as soon as I found out Yankovic wrote & starred in it. I think when I rented it on VHS I watched it 3 times in one weekend, then rented it again 9 months later.
Thus I was pretty primed to see "Weird: The Al Yankovic Story." Perhaps because of the title (which I took literally) I expected it to be a biography. A funny biography, to be sure; and likely parodying the biopic genre, as parody is at the heart of what Weird Al does. And that's where my dislike for the movie spawned.
You see, Weird is not a biography. It starts out as a sort of parody/biography, taking satirical liberties with the truth— which is exactly what I was expecting— but then gradually becomes completely unmoored from reality. Pretty soon it's a Weird Al self glorification fest on LSD, and it's not amusing.
Among the run-on jokes I found tedious:
- Al's parents hate him, like sadistically hate him, and treat him as a failure even when he's objectively successful
- Al insists repeatedly that he wrote Eat It as an original song, not a work of parody, and Michael Jackson wrote a little-known parody based on it
- Madonna threw herself at Al, made him an alcoholic, and tried to turn him into a murderous drug cartel leader.
As I sat through to the end of the movie I was reminded of what a writing teacher said to one of my classmates years ago about his absurdist comedy story written in the fashion of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. "John," he said— I think his name was John— "Your story is like a hot air balloon with no ropes. It rises and it's beautiful. But it's not moored to the ground of reality. It starts floating away, further and further away from reality, until the audience can't make sense of it anymore."
"Weird: The Al Yankovic Story" is that untethered balloon floating farther and farther away.
