Windsor Star Published:”Thursday, December 20, 2007 John C. Reilly was appearing in Chicago onstage the other night as Dewey Cox, and the act may be something to fall back on if he ever gives up the daytime job. Apart from anything else demonstrated by Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, the movie shows that he can do plausible versions of Johnny Cash, Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison and on and on.

He’s like a kid who locked himself in his room singing along with his record collection and finally made it pay off. The movie is a spoof of rock star biopics, most obviously Walk the Line, which borrows the wife at home and the affair with the backup singer on the road. There’s also a lift from Ray, who, you may remember, was blamed for letting his little brother drown. Dewey Cox is out in the barn playing with machetes with his own brother one day when he inadvertently slices him in half.

Fatally? The doctor observes: “It’s a particularly bad case of somebody being cut in half.” Life after that is never quite right for Dewey, whose father turns up at every triumph to remind him, “The wrong brother died.” He develops into a musical prodigy who masters an instrument almost as soon as he picks it up, and segues effortlessly from one genre to another in order to stay on top of the charts. Soul music? Bubblegum rock? Acid rock? Surfin’ songs? Folk rock? He does it all.

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