Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is turning a “true story” upside down on Netflix and you shouldn’t miss it

straight is Weird: The Al Yankovic Story joined Netflix and I had no idea what to expect from this film. In the US, musician ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic may be a real brand with his parody songs on well-known hits (like “Like a Surgeon” instead of “Like a Virgin”). In Germany, probably very few people have ever heard of him. So I started the biopic starring Daniel Radcliffe as an educational opportunity about his true story… and got something completely different. Fortunately.

Weird doesn’t just parody songs on Netflix, it parodies an entire genre

Biopics are not my favorite genre. Even if biographical films are often a good opportunity to learn something about the true history of famous personalities in two hours, the film genre too often simply works through stations in life that have to be “checked off” for a complete picture of the artists. And that is often repetitive and rarely exciting. Weird goes to Netflix as biographical parody a refreshingly different way.

Born in 1959, artist Alfred Matthew Yankovic, nicknamed Weird Al, really exists. And so do his songs picked up in the film (though not in the correct order of appearance). But because the underdog Weird Al was such a colorful person from the start, who rose to fame through absurd songs, it’s not always easy to tell where the comedy refers to the real and where it drifts into the fictional. But that’s exactly what makes the film experience as a wild ride on Netflix all the more exciting.

For example, the polka-loving artist literally muddled the hit “My Sharona” into Italian mortadella “My Bologna” — which really happened. But by the time Al falls in love with Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), Michael Jackson is stealing songs from his repertoire, and drug lord Pablo Escobar is on the scene, it should be clear to everyone that Daniel Radcliffe’s version of Al is us in this satire on reality by the nose. The fact that Al Yankovic co-wrote the screenplay to poke fun at his own life says it all.

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe gets to shine in Weird on Netflix

Since his Harry Potter career, Daniel Radcliffe has played many absurd roles. If we remember his farting corpse in Swiss Army Man or walking around with guns nailed to his hands in Guns Akimbo, Weird Al is probably not his craziest role. But still one of his best.

Already alone, um Daniel Radcliffe with a curly wig and an accordion in front of his stomach experience is worth tuning in to Weird on Netflix. But beyond that, his embodiment of the eccentric comedian shines with enthusiasm, without irretrievably exceeding the limit of overexcitedness. His performance arouses the desire to follow the embodied role model even when the credits are rolling on Netflix. And so the fake biopic achieves more for me than many a “real” representative of the genre.

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