My quick rating - 8,1/10. I am such a huge fan that it didn't really matter who was in it, I was massively looking forward to it. The fact that Daniel Radcliffe decided to take on the role of "Weird" Al was the icing on the cake due to his recent turns in film choices. So far I have no idea if this is historically accurate at all or not (I have to play along with a parody of his own history) but I honestly don't care. Playing along with that will be difficult to do for the whole review, sorry. The way he made up nearly every bit of what his life was like is brilliant. Radcliffe plays the part of Yankovic to perfection making his torrid love affair with Madonna that much more real. I was surprised they were able to even go into the fact that Michael Jackson wrote his own parody song called "Beat It" to ride the fame of "Eat It" which clearly was an original "Weird" Al creation. I also thought the mission to Columbia was classified, so they must've changed some of the story to allow it to be shown. Part of that secret is out now. It must've taken a lot of guts to finally come out and tell the truth about his life such as this. Come Oscar time, I COMPLETELY expect the entire cast to be nominated in one way or another.
Now back to our regularly scheduled review. The movie starts out with an accident and "Weird" Al giving his voiceover asking us to enjoy his autobiography. This settles the audience into a journey like many music biopics. The sheer genius of how it slowly unravels though is Yankovic taunting the viewers into playing a game of how much of this will you accept as truth before you realize this is just a brilliant parody. Everything is subtle at first and even after it gets leveled into absolutely absurd the cast continues to play it completely straight as fact. Evan Rachel Wood does a spectacular job as Madonna while I could pretty much single out each one throughout but there are so many spots in this one with people that you know are there to celebrate Yankovic just as much as being in the movie. Check the cast list and you'll see all kinds of familiar names. Throughout the flick, you are constantly challenged with the jokes fired at you while juggling if anything being portrayed is even factual. It makes it more fun watching the whole thing unfold like this. I still am chuckling thinking of the scenes and it has been a couple of days removed. Suffice it to say, I have always been a fan but I still can recommend this one to anyone with a sense of humor. But if you happen to be at the age of knowing his cult stardom and the era of the 80s-90s then even more of this will be hilarious. I know growing up I was always looking forward to the next parody song to be released. I also never went disappointed when they hit. I am sure a bit of my warped sense of humor was shaped a bit by this man. Blame "Weird" Al and Steve Martin for sure. "Live the life you wanna live. You know, be as weird as you wanna be. Believe me, you will never find true happiness."
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