The story of Dewey Cox is a biographical parody of the lives of many rock and roll stars that hail from the era of Elvis and Buddy Holley. If you said this movie was a spoof off of a particular biography, it would have to be Walk the Line, but while they do have many similarities, Walk Hard goes off on its own path a few times.
Dewey Cox was born into a simple life, and he was always shadowed by his older brother who was a prodigy on the piano. But, as fate would have it, an innocent machete fight left Dewey's older sibling halved, and as his brother died, he had just one thing to say, "You have to be twice as great for the both of us."
Growing up, Dewey poured everything he could into playing the guitar, but no matter how good he got, his dad always proclaimed that the wrong kid died. When Dewey plays for a high school dance, and gets the audience worked up, his dad believes that the singing is a thing of the devil and Dewey goes off on his own, along with his brand new girlfriend. At the age of 15 (yes, even at this young age, Dewey is played by Reilly), Dewey is a struggling musician trying to find his song while his 12-year-old wife tries to raise their kid.
Eventually, Dewey gets inspired by the hard walk ahead of him and moves from his job as a cleaning boy to a big time musical hit. Dewey Cox and his band are an instant success and they start traveling the world. As their tour continues, a rift between he and his wife appears, and the inclusion of the band's new female vocalist, Darlene, doesn't help anything, especially since the sexual tension between the two is very evident in the songs that they duet together.
But Dewey is left alone when he marries Darlene and his two wives find out about each other. This starts the rock star on a new phase of his life (what is referred to as "Middle Dewey") filled with drugs, casual sex and protest songs that no one can really understand. During this time, he goes to India to meditate with The Maharishi and the Beatles. This segment is fairly comical as each of the actors chosen for the Beatles (Jack Black as Paul McCartney, Justin Long as George Harrison, Paul Rudd as John Lennon and Jason Schwartzman as Ringo Starr) play their parts in a very over the top manner, and it all ends in a Yellow Submarine-esque animated acid trip.
During one of his several trips into rehab, Dewey is visited by the ghost of his long-dead brother, who tries to snap him out of the twisted path he is on. It is then, when Dewey realizes that what he has missed all these years was the love of his father, unfortunately, that it seems his dad has been getting ready for Dewey's eventual return home, and once again our main character finds himself in a machete fight.
Walk Hard is bookended by the older Dewey Cox remembering his life before his final performance, where he will unveil his life-long masterpiece that will tell the world what his life has taught him and what he realized he was really missing.
The two disc edition of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story comes with both the theatrical and unrated versions of the film, as well as more deleted scenes and stand-alone song performances that are not available on the standard release. This DVD also contains the comical Dewey Cox Sausage commercials as well as the outtakes that Reilly acted out in-character. One of the funnier, if not fairly pointless, featurettes was an interview with many of the stars in the film as well as music artists as they discuss what they remember about the "real" Dewey Cox.
While I really enjoyed this movie, and found that it had some great music to it, it isn't for everyone. Fans of Judd Apatow's other films (40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad) will fall in love with this biographical spoof tale, and it could very well have a wider audience then that. But there is an excessive amount of drug usage and nudity (both male and female) that could easily turn a lot of people away.
