Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) ***1/2

I've been a fan of "Weird Al" Yankovic since I was seven or eight years old. I distinctly remember listening to his cassettes on my boombox, right alongside the artists he parodied, like Michael Jackson and Huey Lewis & The News. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022) and it held up well on a rewatch.

Al and co-writer/director Eric Appel made the right choice in making the film a parody itself (of music biopics). The blurred lines of what actually happened and what didn't (most of the movie and all of which should be fairly obvious to even the casual fan) is a lot of what makes it fun. Not all the jokes land and the film could have been 15 minutes shorter, but I definitely laughed out loud plenty of times (again) and Daniel Radcliffe and Evan Rachel Wood knock it out of the park.

Recommended for fans of UHF (1989) (which I had the great pleasure of seeing in a theater with an Al Q&A in 2017), This Is Spinal Tap (1984), and The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash (1978).