CLICK HERE to win free ADVANCE PASSES to the new J.J. Abrams-produced movie CLOVERFIELD (formerly titled 1.18.08)in KC before its even released!!After the pitch-perfect musical parody “This is Spinal Tap,” anybody that tries to venture into similar territory has a lot to live up to.Judd Apatow, Jake Kasdan and company knew this going into the filming of their musician biopic “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” so they make it clear right away that this will be made of sillier stuff. The pre-teen accidental deaths of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash’s brothers gave those movie characters easy motivation in the Oscar-winning films “Ray” and “Walk the Line.”Using that simple film logic, it is only fitting then that the fictional musical legend Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) accidentally chop his brother in two with a machete. If that isn’t silly enough, the boy who was “halved” is still speaking after it happened–well his upper half is, at least.Directed by Kasdan and co-penned by Kasdan and Apatow, “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story” sends up every major convention in musical rags-to-riches stories, but never takes itself seriously enough to affect any kind of investment in its audience. Therefore, it positions itself as a sort of “Airplane”-schtick comedy, where the movie is only as funny as its last scene.Filled with inside jokes for die-hard rock n’ roll historians, the film takes Reilly’s dunderheaded innocent through every major rock movement (besides heavy metal, smartly) from rockabilly to late-career rap-revival, and the parody reaches its highest level in the form of the songs. With some help from established songwriters Marshall Crenshaw and Dan Bern, Apatow and Kasdan have penned some truly great rock parodies, starting with the Cash-inspired Golden Globe-nominated title track.In “Let’s Duet,” Cox and his newly-hired religious temptress of a background singer Darlene Madison (Jenna Fischer), exchange dirty double entendres that turn out to be squeaky clean upon completion. His Bob Dylan phase is shot in shaky, low-res black and white to mimic “Don’t Look Back,” while Cox sings the hilariously obtuse “Royal Jelly” in a turtleneck with dark sunglasses. And in a bizarrely misguided stab at hippie activism, Cox trumpets the rights of little people with his unknowingly offensive “Let Me Hold You (Little Man).”For the most part, the plentiful amount of cameos are very funny, and there is a nice wink to the audience. Every time a famous rock star is portrayed, they are referred to by their first and last names repeatedly, as if the filmmakers are acknowledging that their actors look and act nothing like them. Instead, in a move that is smart considering their low amount of actual screen time, they’ve amplified one aspect of their personality to a ridiculous level. This goes for Jack White as Elvis Presley, all the way to Jack Black as Paul McCartney, who has absolutely none of his characters’ physical traits. Frankie Muniz has so little time to establish his famous personage that Reilly does it for him, by merely calling him Buddy Holly over and over.Other cameos, like Jonah Hill (“Superbad”) as the older ghost of Cox’s “halved” brother, don’t fare so well and feel thrown in to accomodate all of Apatow’s famous friends.Reilly himself is an inspired choice, and portrays the perfect amount of wide-eyed marvel at everything that happens to him. It makes it easier to forgive Cox for having 20-some-odd children and consistently cheating on his wife (once by getting married again, claiming not to know that it’s wrong to have two wives). He’s also a terrific singer, as he proved before in “Chicago,” with his Oscar-nominated turn as “Mr. Cellophane.”“Ray” and “Walk the Line” succeeded in focusing time on their subjects’ better qualities and their extraordinary music. “Walk Hard” surely succeeds at pointing out to what absurd level those filmmakers might have gone to do that. Cox’s refrain that the music is more important than anything else and insistence at trying every drug that he’s warned against are snarky reminders that we should take all this hero worship with a grain of salt.Some of the movie, however, works better in theory. Cox loses his sense of smell– a risky send-up of Ray Charles’ blindness– early in the film. It is an annoying joke repeated ad nauseum throughout, but when, at the end, he suddenly and mysteriously regains it, it’s a sublime moment of ridiculousness that pokes fun at what lengths movies will go to make the audience feel warm and fuzzy, and makes the lame joke worth it.As it is, “Walk Hard” is full of great moments, and since it’s too deep into parody to also achieve an involving story (unlike this year’s “Hot Fuzz,” which straddled that line perfectly), the moments in between become less important. Reilly is fantastic, the music is right on, and the commentary is obnoxiously accurate, so while “Walk Hard” may not go to 11, it’s definitely worth a seven or an eight.Sidenote:* From the copious amounts of production photos available online, it seems that a lot was cut out of this movie. I wonder if, in traditional Apatow fashion, the DVD will contain loads of alternate/other hilarious scenes…. target=”_blank