The Director of ‘Red One’ Made One of the Most Important and Hilarious Musical Biopics of the 21st Century

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The new movie by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Chris Evans, Red One, comes out this weekend, and there’s plenty of reason to believe it will be a hit. At the helm of Red One is Jake Kasdan, a director who has made two hits with Johnson that have cumulatively made a billion and a half dollars, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Jumanji: The Next Level. But Kasdan’s track record extends beyond his cooking with The Rock, not only directing the cult classic Orange County, but also episodes of Freaks and Geeks and the pilot of New Girl. But Kasdan’s best work is the comedic parody masterpiece Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and if you don’t agree, then… “the wrong kid died.”

‘Walk Hard’ is Hilarious and Has Incredible Music

Released shortly after the major music biopics Ray and Walk the Line, Walk Hard set out to parody every element that made those movies at times cheesy and predictable. Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) has a joyous childhood stained by loss and tragedy which leads him to discover music. After hitting it big, despite everyone telling him he was never going to make it, Dewey has a hard life struggling with fame, success, drugs, infidelity, and unprocessed trauma in a way that is very similar to the aforementioned serious dramas. Despite this, Dewey manages to pull through and ends the movie with one song and performance that sums up his entire life and all that he’s learned. It is parody at the highest level and has only grown in audience appreciation.

Full of memorable lines, insane songs made up of double entendres, and great comedic performances from not just Reilly but Kristen Wiig, Jenna Fischer, and Tim Meadows (among a litany of hilarious cameos), Walk Hard is hilarious throughout. But it’s not just the top-tier comedic gags that make Walk Hard a classic. In its attempts to recreate biopics of incredible musicians, Walk Hard inadvertently made a beautiful-looking film, with a story that is just as effective as its subjects of mockery, with music that actually holds up. From its title track “Walk Hard,” to its hard-hitting “Guilty as Charged,” the patently silly “Let’s Duet,” and the genuinely moving “Beautiful Ride,” the music of Walk Hard is undeniably great to listen to beyond the humor of it. But Walk Hard can’t be celebrated without mentioning how it affected other movies.

‘Walk Hard’ Changed Biopics for The Better

When a movie so expertly points out all of a genre’s tropes, it’s hard to go back and take those kinds of movies seriously. In Patrick Willem’sexcellent video essay on the subject, he points out how silly the standard rise-fall-redemption arc every musician conveniently goes through for the sake of a three-act structure, just seems ridiculous after Walk Hard. There have been filmmakers that have recognized this too and inspired them to approach the story of real-life celebrities with more nuance than the cradle-to-grave approach. Aaron Sorkin specifically cited Walk Hard as a reason to approach Steve Jobs with a more theatrical conceit, while Don Cheadlewent as far as calling Walk Hard “a terrifying cautionary tale.” When discussing his movie about Miles Davis, Miles Ahead, Cheadle went on to say “[Walk Hard] just brilliantly skewers every single aspect of [movies about musicians] and makes you a little Twitter-pated. I hope nothing we do comes off like that.”

Red One is unlikely will do for holiday movies what Walk Hard did for biopics. But it is promising that Jake Kasdan is behind the scenes, hopefully steering the ship of a fun movie, even if it doesn’t reach Walk Hard‘s heights. Hopefully, the success of the Jumanji movies and a potential hit in Red One allows Kasdan the opportunity to return to such comedic brilliance as Dewey Cox demanding an army of didgeridoos. Let’s raise a glass to Dewey Cox, even if he never once paid for drugs. Not once.

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.

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