Finally popped it into the DVD player today. And I'm trying really hard to like it.
I mean, the parody of the artist's rise, fall, and rise again is spot on. That I'm having trouble liking it might be due to my general distaste for that kind of tropery less so than the film itself.
Nevertheless, I'll try to finish the film and regard it on its own merits.
I really liked the film up until Madonna showed up. I know her presence in the film is supposed to be the peak parody of the successful artist letting success and drugs and sex and alcohol go to his head, but it grates, and grates hard. It goes on much, much longer than it should, slowing the story down.
I'll be honest -- the only thing that might make me get to watch the film again are the cameos. Conan O'Brien as Andy Warhol and Jack Black as Wolfman Jack make the Dr. Demento party scene work far better than the Madonna sequence makes the entire film work. So maybe this film is better for the little bits than the whole.
Yeah. The Madonna bit is going to WAAAAAY too long. There's about 25 minutes left, and I hope it gets better.
Now he's redeeming himself. And his mom got fat. Which segues into Weird Al writing "Fat," of course. There's a lot of hint-dropping for Weird Al's songs throughout, and while some of them are Easter eggs, a lot of them like this are, well, eh . . .
So the film's pretty uneven. It's a perfect parody of the artist's rise, fall, and rise again, but while the first half has a lot of great jokes, the second half takes the parody just a bit too seriously.
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