The Weird Al Yankovic biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe is underway, and after set photos leaked over the weekend, the production has released the first official image of DanRad done up like Weird Al. He is unsettlingly convincing.
“Wearing the Hawaiian shirt is a huge responsibility that I don’t take lightly and I’m honored to finally share with the world the absolutely 100% unassailably true story of Weird Al’s depraved and scandalous life.†- Daniel Radcliffe pic.twitter.com/FAjF5bLbml
— Funny Or Die (@funnyordie) February 22, 2022
I’m not married to the idea of actors looking exactly like the real-life subjects they portray, but that is a VERY good facsimile of Weird Al, wow. I also love Radcliffe’s statement that goes with the photo, and how everyone is fully committed to the bit of presenting Weird Al’s life story as a scandal-ridden saga of debauchery and depravity. You have to market the movie anyway, might as well have fun with it and make it part of the narrative of the film. This biopic is approaching its subject as a parody, much as Weird Al approaches his music, and all the messaging surrounding the film supports that approach. It’s the Walk Hard way. That movie assumed Dewey Cox was a real person and used real concerts at proper music venues to advertise the movie, and the whole thing was so thoroughly convincing they torpedoed music biopics for…ever. That ship is still sunk. (That Elvis movie looks like a deleted scene from Walk Hard.) Can the Weird Al movie do for music parodies what Walk Hard did for music biopics? We’ll see. But it’s off to a good start.