If you are tired of celebrity biopics that bend the truth in various small ways, exaggerating aspects of their subjects' lives or compressing their history to make a better film, then this un-exaggerated, completely true biopic is the movie for you! “Weird: The Al Yankovic” story is the definitive history of everyone's favorite accordion-player. The film takes us from a young Al getting his first accordion, a move that obviously led to great popularity among his peers, especially the girls, through his meteoric rise to eclipse the success of such acts as The Beatles, to his steamy love affair with Madonna. The film covers his dark period struggling with alcoholism, as well as his transition from parody songs to the all-original works he is best known for, like “Eat It” and “Amish Paradise.”
“Weird” is directed by esteemed documentary filmmaker Eric Appel, who has a long list of documentaries and feature films under his belt, and has served as a mentor for Ken Burns. The movie started out as a 2010 Funny-or-Die trailer by Appel, and it took 12 years to make the full biopic due to all the extensive research and fact-checking. Also, they had to wait for Daniel Radcliffe to become muscular enough to portray Weird Al. With Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, and numerous celebrity cameos, Appel has created a film that fully captures Yankovic's profound effect on the music business and his widespread esteem. Comparisons to other classic musician biopics like “The Doors,” “Amadeus,” and “Walk the Line” are inevitable, but I think a closer comparison would be the thinly-veiled biopic of publisher William Randolph Hearst from 1941. I'm talking about a little movie called “Citizen Kane.”
4 stars out of 5
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