The biggest thing you have to understand before watching this is that Weird Al's whole career is making parodies. The twist on that is that he's very serious about something that, on the surface, isn't serious at all. The man pays great attention to detail, whether it's a specific song, a style of music, or even a style of movie. Once you get that, you understand this "biopic."
On the surface it's like so many other music biopics. It tells the backstory of the musician, the rise, the finding success, the fall, the alienating family and friends, and perhaps the rise again. The way the genre presents it all is factual (even if some of the facts are eliminated/combined/given more or less prominence) in order to create a compelling story. It's also presented as seriously as possible in order to sell the "this is the story of..." element.
So "Weird" does not portray itself comedically. It's presented as being serious in order to sell us on being a biopic of a musician. Yet, as Weird Al has done with all of his parodies in his attention to detail, he presents what's become familiar and twists it around. By portraying it as serious, the comedy becomes that much more hilarious. It's not about having "funny stuff" for the sake of funny stuff, it's deeper. By all accounts, Alfred Matthew Yankovic is the most uninteresting, unassuming, clean cut, nicest celebrity there is, with very little to no hint of scandal ever in his life. Yet this movie portrays a very opposite version of Weird Al that smokes, drinks, had an intense affair with Madonna, and took out Pablo Escobar. Oh, and "Eat It" came first, which Michael Jackson parodied as "Beat It". Those things, however, aren't the comedy, it's the presentation of those things. This "biopic" is both a parody of the biopic formula with all its genre defining tropes, but it's also a parody of Al himself. I really enjoyed this movie.
On the surface it's like so many other music biopics. It tells the backstory of the musician, the rise, the finding success, the fall, the alienating family and friends, and perhaps the rise again. The way the genre presents it all is factual (even if some of the facts are eliminated/combined/given more or less prominence) in order to create a compelling story. It's also presented as seriously as possible in order to sell the "this is the story of..." element.
So "Weird" does not portray itself comedically. It's presented as being serious in order to sell us on being a biopic of a musician. Yet, as Weird Al has done with all of his parodies in his attention to detail, he presents what's become familiar and twists it around. By portraying it as serious, the comedy becomes that much more hilarious. It's not about having "funny stuff" for the sake of funny stuff, it's deeper. By all accounts, Alfred Matthew Yankovic is the most uninteresting, unassuming, clean cut, nicest celebrity there is, with very little to no hint of scandal ever in his life. Yet this movie portrays a very opposite version of Weird Al that smokes, drinks, had an intense affair with Madonna, and took out Pablo Escobar. Oh, and "Eat It" came first, which Michael Jackson parodied as "Beat It". Those things, however, aren't the comedy, it's the presentation of those things. This "biopic" is both a parody of the biopic formula with all its genre defining tropes, but it's also a parody of Al himself. I really enjoyed this movie.