While watching Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, I asked myself who this movie was made for. And I immediately answered: Me. It was made for me. And every thirteen year old who rocked out to Eat It at the roller rink and convinced himself Weird Al was the alpha and omega of comedy gold. For every teenager who later tore through town in his first car on the way to the Babbage’s at the mall with Even Worse playing on repeat on the tape deck. Yeah, that was me.

Weird is available on, of all platforms, Roku TV where we get to watch commercials every twenty minutes or so. You know… like a barbarian…. or possibly a Librarian. Like Conan the Librarian…. and if that joke makes sense to you, you are the target audience for this movie.

The flick tells the completely accurate life story of Weird Al, from his childhood to his eventual death. And if that doesn’t sound right (but you know it absolutely is), you are the target market for this movie. There are so many in-jokes and gags in this flick that anyone who doesn’t know their Weird Al history (and lies) or the history (and lies) of the 70s and 80s will probably just be confused.

Daniel Radcliff – god bless his dorkiness – plays Al Yankovic… which introduces a brilliant joke that works as both a Harry Potter and a Dr. Demento joke combined. Even Rachel Woods plays Madonna and Rainn Wilson plays Dr. Demento, both perfectly cast. And Al himself plays a record producer.

The film is a genuine and loving parody of musical biopics… one based on the life of an actual artist. There may even be some truth to the content… but not much. Because this is very much Al pulling our legs, satirizing not only music biopics (which, let’s face it, Walk Hard got to first) but himself and the 80s as well. It eventually chucks aside the logical constraints of a biopic and just keeps going. To be fair, the final twenty minutes could have been stronger… but that might also have been bedtime creeping up on me (he said writing this review after finishing the movie, with 5am rapidly approaching).

I genuinely think this is a great, hilarious film… one that not everyone is gonna get or find as funny as I did… but that score is in earnest. It’s not itself a parody, irony, or over-glorification. Even with the Roku ads. It made my inner child – the one whose first record was a Weird Al tape – very very happy.

Score: 91