5 Music Biopic Spoofs You Can Stream Right Now
I love music biopics. And I also love spoof movies . Whether it's the rawness of Walk the Line or Bohemian Rhapsody , or lighter fare like La Bamba or the Beatles' classic A Hard Day's Night , they paint an entertaining and gripping picture of the lives of our favorite legendary musicians.
But sometimes the music biopic genre itself provides the perfect target for poking fun at. And that's why the movie gods have gifted us with these hilarious, spoof music movies that you can stream right now.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
This is not a ranked list (and This Is Spinal Tap is here, too, so...), but if I had to pick one spoof music biopic to last me the rest of my life, it would be Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, because it rips so hard on several of the most serious of the genre, all in one perfect movie.
In one of John C. Reilly's greatest roles, Walk Hard is by and large a send-up of two movies—the 2004 Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and 2005's Ray Charles biopic Ray. It also stabs at several others in the genre for extra fun. Reilly is the titular Dewey, a Johnny Cash-esque singer whose rise to fame is drenched in rock-and-roll clichés, from his tragic childhood (he accidentally cuts his brother in two with a machete) to his many love affairs to his spiral into drug use. Of course, it's all done with a soundtrack full of some of the funniest and punniest musical numbers you can imagine.
Written by Judd Apatow and director Jake Kasdan, Reilly is supported by some epic performances from the likes of Tim Meadows as Dewey's drug-enabling manager, Jenna Fischer as his wife, and a cameo by Jason Schwartzman, Paul Rudd, Jack Black, and Justin Long as The Beatles.
This Is Spinal Tap
The mockumentary that set the mold for pretty much every mockumentary after it, This Is Spinal Tap was the brainchild of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner, most of whom would continue advancing the genre in films like Best in Show and A Mighty Wind . Spinal Tap , however, is the grandaddy of them all.
Fictional documentary filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Reiner) follows fictional British hair metal band Spinal Tap—frontman David St. Hubbins, lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, and bassist Derek Smalls— around on their disastrous U.S. tour, as they cope with the absurdity of rock stardom.
From on-stage set calamities (tiny Stonehenge, and Smalls getting trapped in a giant pod for an entire song) to the mysterious deaths of their drummers, to amps that go to 11, This Is Spinal Tap is a cult classic that mustn't be missed.
The Rutles: All You Need in Cash
When I was little, I thought The Rutles were The Beatles. I remember hearing Get Back and thinking it was a ripoff of the Rutles' near-identical Get Up and Go. It's kind of like how my kids think that Weird Al wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit .
You can expect a lot more of that with this 1978 classic spoof of The Beatles Anthology and their 1970 film Let It Be . Written and directed by Gary Weis and Monty Python's Eric Idle, The Rutles follows the rise and fall of the "Pre-Fab Four" made up of Dirk McQuickly (Idle), Barry Wom (John Halsey), Stig O'Hara (Ricky Fataar), and Ron Nasty (Neil Innes) as they play their way way from Hamburg's Rat Kellar, around the world, and to their eventual break-up.
But the music is where this film shines, with impeccably written close cousins to their Beatles' counterparts, including Hold My Hand (a mix of I Want to Hold Your Hand and All My Loving ), Cheese and Onions ( I Am the Walrus / A Day in the Life ), and Ouch! ( Help! ).
Unfortunately, The Rutles: All You Need is Cash isn't currently streaming on any major streaming services. But you can find it for free on YouTube and at the Internet Archive . It is very much worth a watch.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Andy Samberg and his Lonely Island crew of Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer changed SNL and YouTube forever with viral Digital Shorts like Lazy Sunday and D**k in a Box. Always hilarious and always musical, it surprised no one when the trio released Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, a mockumentary-style comedy that follows the over-the-top life of Bieber-esque popstar, Conner4Real (Samberg).
After fame skyrockets Connor to ridiculous heights of excess, and he becomes surrounded by yes-people and leeches, his solo career takes a nosedive. Connor has a moral reckoning and must go crawling back to his former Style Boyz boy-bandmates (Taccone and Schaffer) for help.
Popstar is packed with cameos from real-life superstars like DJ Khaled, Jared Leto, Adam Levine (in hologram), and Justin Timberlake as Connor's personal chef. It also features tons of hysterical, often raunchy song parodies, including the brag-track I'm So Humble and Things in My Jeep , an idiotic track featuring Questlove where Connor literally raps about the junk in his car.
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
Long live The D. I love this pick for this list because it doesn't take aim at music biopics so much as it roasts (over the flames of Hell) rock myth films like Crossroads and music-quest movies like the classic The Blues Brothers .
Based on their 1997 cult-hit HBO series Tenacious D , The Pick of Destiny dared to take Jack Black and Kyle Gass's schtick as the Greatest Band in the World to feature film territory. Directed by famed music video director Liam Lynch, PoD rewrites The D's origin story, where JB and KG go on a quest to find the Pick of Destiny, a guitar pick made from one of Satan's teeth that is said to grant its user otherworldly shredding abilities.
Their quest dips in and out of the absurd and psychedelic—John C. Reilly even reprises his role from the show as Sasquatch in an insane hallucinogenic dream sequence. The film, of course, also features a soundtrack that'll rock your socks off with numbers such as Kickapoo , Dude (I Totally Miss You) , Master Exploder , and Beelzeboss (The Final Showdown), where Kyle and Jack face off against Dave Grohl as Satan.
There are, of course, many more music movie spoofs and mockumentary-style gems out there, including Christopher Guest's iconic A Mighty Wind and Chris Rock's hilarious gangster-rap send-up CB4 . If you love music and movies about music, these fun films are a great way to pay homage to their over-the-top glory.
