I have been a Weird Al fan since his first album which I picked up when I was maybe 10 years old. I have every album he has made and saw him in concert once when he came to our area. I’ve seen his videos, his UHF movie, and yes I also saw his recent “biopic” and I do also have a huge collection of MAD magazines. I have also listened to Alan Sherman tunes so I’m familiar with other parody comedy acts.
People who just found out about “Weird Al” or know his more recent stuff may not understand his style of humour. He is a very smart clean cut guy, as is his band. The “biopic” on Roku is a completely over-the-top parody of the biopic genre. What is hilarious is that people watching this may actually think that is really about Weird Al’s life. It’s more like a fantasy-life a 13 year old immature pubescent boy version of Weird Al might have dreamed up!
The accordion happens to be something Weird Al plays and does incorporate into his comedy “shtick” and I’m happy he does as it at least introduces people to it (although there are arguments on whether he has done more to help or hurt the “image” of an accordion as a serious instrument, or some comedy gag prop). Remember his audience is primarily in the USA which more or less abandoned the accordion anyways.
Most of his songs are lyrical masterpieces, with the underlying music almost exactly like the original (that is, no accordion at all). He does add accordion bits into some songs or does “polka medleys” consisting of a dozen or more tunes played way faster than normal on accordion. Obviously his stage performances feature quite a lot of accordion because he has to be up there playing something with the band! But his discography has way more music that is very much exactly like the original with lyrics changed and some sounds altered for humour (e.g. fart noises as beats, cows mooing, etc), and not as much accordion as you would think.
The biopic features the accordion quite prominently as well… it’s his “thing” as part of his image and looks good on-screen, but from years of listening to Weird Al stuff, I can tell you that his genius is in the lyrics… most people don’t really care much for whether the accordion is there or not. The accordion just adds to his sort of “nerdy” “weird” look and sound but it’s not the main attraction, at least not on his albums and videos.
With that said, I enjoyed the biopic but my wife (who is not into Weird Al at all) thought it completely sucked! And I had to explain to her that the entire movie is a joke, not to be taken seriously as a reflection of Weird Al’s life or personality at all. The movie featured a lot of his music, but only snippets and unfortunately that is not enough lyrically to really showcase any of that side of his talent (everyone recognizes small pieces of music, but you have to listen to an entire Weird Al song from beginning to end to really appreciate the lyrics).
