The past couple of years have seen an unusual number of high-profile music biopics, notably Ray and Walk the Line. Both films garnered critical and popular acclaim and received multiple Oscar nominations.

I enjoyed both, Ray for the strong performances, Walk the Line more for the music. The problem with both films is that when you condense into the length of a feature film the biographies of Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, their stories are remarkably similar. This holds for other biopics as well. The narrative of the two films was virtually identical, from the troubled childhood, to the struggles to make their own music, to infidelity on the road. That bugged me to no end, and no, I do not know why it did. Anyhow, there is a cure to this annoyance: Walk Hard, a film that spoofs the music biopic sub-genre by playing it straight. Yes, it sounds strange, but it works wonderfully.

Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) is from Springberry, Alabama. As a youth he lived in the shadow of his younger brother, until that fateful day when a playful machete fight resulting in "a serious case of being cut in half" leaves their father telling Dewey that "the wrong son died," repeatedly throughout the film. This incident forever sets Dewey along a path where he must be twice as great - for himself and his brother. His chosen path is music; he picks up and masters the guitar in seconds.

Cox is a character made up almost entirely of genre cliches. He marries young, but leaves his family home when he meets his true love, Darlene (Jenna Fischer) on the road. He makes all manner of bad decisions, getting involved with all kinds of drugs as his music hops styles to keep on top of the charts, all leading to the inevitable downward spiral.

I could go on describing the plot, but I am sure you are familiar with this type of story. The bigger questions are whether or not it is funny and how well the performances work. The short answers are: yes, it is most definitely funny, and the performances are all quite good, with John C. Reilly's work being absolutely first rate.

What makes Walk Hard work as well as it does is that it is played straight. Rather than pushing everything over the top (like the Scary Movie series), the comedy plays much more subtly, so it retains an emotional center. It is an odd mix and it may hold some of the comedy back, but in the long run it makes the movie that much stronger - a full-fledged movie as opposed to a series of gags. Credit director Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow, who collaborated on the screenplay, for this success.