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LOS ANGELES, Oct. 31 (UPI) \u2014<\/span> Walk Hard <\/i>is the definitive spoof of musician biopics, but its creators had to invent the fictional character of Dewey Cox to do it. Weird: The Al Yankovic Story <\/i>is a spoof of Yankovic\u2019s actual biography.<\/p>\n Weird, <\/i>which streams Friday on the Roku Channel, mocks the format of the biopic in some similar ways to Walk Hard<\/i>. Yankovic flashes back to his entire life, and many of the early scenes blatantly embellish the adversity Yankovic faced.\n<\/p>\n As young Alfie (Richard Aaron Anderson), Yankovic\u2019s parents, Mary (Julianne Nicholson) and Nick (Toby Huss), discourage their son from practicing the accordion. Al\u2019s secret accordion practice is treated like a devilish monstrosity.<\/p>\n The actors get it. They play it like total drama and that enhances the absurdity of teenage Al (David Bloom) becoming popular through playing accordion.\n<\/p>\n By the time Al grows up (Daniel Radcliffe), he lip-syncs to Yankovic\u2019s actual singing. Al moves away from home to become a success with his music.<\/p>\n A common trope of musician biopics is to show a scene in which the artist discovers the inspiration for their famous track. To actually incorporate the lyrics of Yankovic\u2019s parodies in those scenes is a new level of parody, but they really only do that for one song.<\/p>\n Early scenes do parody some of Yankovic\u2019s true stories, but Weird <\/i>eventually takes off in entirely fictional tangents. Al dates Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) and his parents continue to disapprove of his success, just because that\u2019s what parents do in musician biopics.<\/p>\n Eventually, Weird<\/i> starts to claim that some of Yankovic\u2019s parodies are actually originals. The film milks that claim extra hard to make it absolutely clear it\u2019s a lie.<\/p>\n Yankovic goes through a self-destructive phase like Johnny Cash or Freddie Mercury did in their biopics. Then it becomes a full-on action movie, absurdly.<\/p>\n Weird<\/i> is like a feature-length Funny or Die<\/i> sketch, but it maintains the joke for 108 minutes, including a new Yankovic song over the end credits.<\/p>\n Director Eric Appel expands his own Funny or Die<\/i> short, and includes some inspired fictional encounters between Yankovic and celebrities.\n<\/p>\n Weird<\/i> covers the greatest hits of Yankovic\u2019s early career. Then, it skips from \u201cLike a Surgeon\u201d to \u201cAmish Paradise\u201d with a brief mention of \u201cFat.\u201d<\/p>\n No later songs are featured, nor are Yankovic\u2019s actual originals that comprise half of each album. And yet, after ending with 1995\u2019s \u201cAmish Paradise,\u201d the film claims to end in 1985, adding to the absurdity.<\/p>\n A straight \u201cWeird Al\u201d Yankovic biopic might actually be more interesting than the dry cradle-to-grave summaries many biopics present. Taking himself seriously would never be Yankovic\u2019s style, though, so the parody version satirizes action movies and the music industry, as well as the biopic format.<\/p>\n Weird<\/i> is a fittingly \u201cWeird Al\u201d tribute to Yankovic\u2019s life and career. He ultimately spoofed himself and what fans might expect a \u201cWeird Al\u201d biopic to be by abandoning the true story halfway through.<\/p>\n Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001 and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012. Read more of his work in Entertainment.<\/i><\/p>\n