The craziest biopic ever made

TORONTO — The new “Weird Al” Yankovic movie, which premiered Thursday at midnight in the Toronto International Film Festival, is called “Weird.” It’s the most accurate title of anything since “Cats.”

For finding a stranger, more deranged, even a just-as-peculiar biopic will be a tall order. Damn near impossible. You can hardly believe it’s real — because it isn’t. Almost nothing in this hilarious story of the pop music parody legend, who became famous with songs like “Yoda” and “Fat,” is remotely true.

Wikipedia fails to mention, for example, Weird Al’s rocky romance with Madonna, who then became a Yoko Ono-esque wedge between him and his band. Michael Jackson definitely did not release “Beat It” after Yankovic wrote “Eat It.” Was cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar a Weird Al superfan who offered him 1 billion pesos to perform at his birthday party? Who’s to say?

What Yankovic and director and co-writer Eric Appel have done, brilliantly in spots, is parody Yankovic’s own life while sending up the whole biopic genre. In a messed-up way, the maneuver is kinda poetic. And so very funny.

It’s a riot when a teenage Al rebelliously sneaks out of the house to attend a cool-kids polka party, and gets peer-pressured into playing the accordion.

Or early on when, as a little kid, he begins to sing “Amazing Grapes” at the dinner table.

“Those aren’t the words!” his cruel father shouts at him.

“I know,” says Little Al, who secretly plays accordion in the closet. “I made them better.”

Later on, Adult Al (Daniel Radcliffe), after creating the tune “My Bologna” from The Knack’s “My Sharona” while making sandwiches, proclaims his life’s dream: “I’ll be the most famous accordion player in an extremely specific genre of music!”

Lush orchestral music swells throughout as though cueing us to cry. And we do, but for a different reason.

Radcliffe dons the frizzy wig and thick-framed glasses, and the role fits him like a size-large Hawaiian shirt. Real Radcliffe and Weird Al share an inherent likability, an innocence really, and Radcliffe’s persona elevates the film. We really care about what happens to his Al, even though everything is fake and a 100% joke. 

And he’s joined by a stacked cast of actors. Evan Rachel Wood plays a gum-chewing ‘80s Madonna and Rainn Wilson takes on the role of radio personality and Weird Al mentor Dr. Demento with the silly seriousness of Tom Hanks in “Elvis.” 

Best is Toby Huss as Al’s father Nick. He channels every disapproving dad in creative-genius biopic history, and wrings laughs out of each sucker punch and grunt.

There are a ton of celeb cameos that I won’t mention. They’re all fantastic.

Weird Al fans, like yours truly, will not only recognize this brand of outrageous humor from his songs, but also his other forays onto the screen. Sendups of movie scenes from “Boogie Nights” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” harken back to what he did in the under-appreciated 1989 comedy movie “UHF” (“Badgers? We don’t need no stinking badgers!”). And the pace and dryness of the gags is a dead ringer for the reedited celebrity interviews he used do on “The Weird Al Show” on CBS.

But what will folks who did not attend AlCon when they were 11 and do not own an autographed “UHF” LP make of this movie? 

Appel’s film, after all, is co-produced by Funny or Die, so there is a skit-like quality to it, even though it exceeds 90 minutes. The movie is a smidge too long. Yet, there’s something appealing here for anyone who enjoys the absurd comedy of Amy Sedaris’ “Strangers With Candy,” or the violent living-room antics of “Family Guy.” You don’t have to know all the words to “The Saga Begins.”

Any teenager today would have a swell time watching “Weird” in his basement at 2 a.m. And some of us who were teenagers 20 to 40 years ago will pull up a chair.