America loves larger-than-life musician and songwriter Dewey Cox! But behind the music is the up-and-down-and-up-again story of a musician whose songs would change a nation. On his rock 'n roll spiral, Cox sleeps with 411 women, marries three times, has 22 kids and 14 stepkids, stars in his own 70s TV show, collects friends ranging from Elvis to the Beatles to a chimp, and gets addicted to and then kicks every drug known to man... but despite it all, Cox grows into a national icon and eventually earns the love of a good woman longtime backup singer Darlene.

There might have been a time I was a fan of parodies and spoofs but that time is long gone. Parodies and spoofs are like the poor man's version of a movie. Not enough original idea's on their own to create their own movie all that is left to do is make fun of other films and genres and ussually poorly. Don't get me wrong there is the occasional spoof film that hits the spot like Hot Fuzz but for the most part most of them miss the mark by a long way off. And as far as Dewey Cox goes it is a fun spoof and no where near as bad as the spoofs that have been released in recent memory (eg. Date Movie, Epic Movie). The movie does make you laugh and has this almost tongue in cheek laugh at itself kind of humor that just fits well. So the movie is decent for a matinee but not the kind of movie you are likely to find yourself watching over and over again.

But still as a standalone movie its not nearly as funny as some of the original comedies that Judd Apatow has put out lately. I do appreciate that most of the storyline is self contained and the movie actually has a plot. Recently most of the spoof movies have been jumping from one pop culture reference to the next with little or no pause to think about actually telling a story or involving a plot for the movie. So it helps that Dewey Cox does have a plot, it does have beginning, a middle and an end and actually tells a story. But just because nobody has spoofed the biopic film yet doesn't mean that it makes it a good idea to do one. There is a lot of funny things in biopics but the irony is all these humorous elements are based on actual events and not nearly as funny when spoofed.

The film also helps itself by actually producing, writing and then performing it's own music. The film is pretending to be a music biopic so it only makes sense to have music and actually perform that music. In fact the songs end up being some of the funniest moments in the film. It helps that all the actors including John C Reilley can actually sing and have fun doing so.

I am not the biggest fan of Reilley but he does do a pretty good job as he has that off kilter kind of humor that works well for the movie. He can also sing and just act silly when needed which is basically what the role is, acting silly. If you can say one thing for the movie it did make me want to go back and watch some of the biopics it was spoofing like Ray and Walk the Line (I did watch Ray the next night in fact). They do hammer some of the jokes too much, telling the same joke over and over and over doesn't add anything it ends up taking something away. The movie was decent for the most part and laughable for other parts.

Grade: C+