(BY ALI NADERZAD) Biopics about rock stars, or shall we simply say popular musicians, are often spun from the same thread because they often concern the same kind of person. They’re the classic underdog stories, rife with family-inflicted scars, warped Freudian dynamics and cyclical rehabbing and drug-taking. These predictable but somewhat engrossing turns of the rock star ethos are gleefully exploited by the fullest by John C. Reilly in his role as Dewey Cox, a spoof country music star. Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow, he of Knocked-Up, Superbad and the Forty year-old Virgin fame, ripped the recent Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, sometimes to almost stupefying effect (see the scene where an angry Reilly rips ten sinks in a row in a public bathroom, a less-than-subtle reference to the scene in Walk The Line where a frustrated yanks an entire sink from the wall and proceeds to smash to smithereens) but it’s never annoying. Make no mistake, however, because Walk the Line is none too subtle. Lester Bangs isn’t anywhere near this movie. But then, team Kasdan-Apatow thankfully steered clear of any Behind the Music references and we should be grateful to them for that. Because Walk Hard is, in its own funny way, an original. Dewey Cox is an original, a simple, hometown boy who abides by an infantilizing mother and has some sort of major unresolved difference with his father. Enter the favored son. Yes, yes, I know, another none-too-subtle reference to Walk The Line, but then the titles are also almost the same, aren’t they? So, to summarize, Dewey Cox is an incredibly talented musician, but his father way prefers his other son over him, Cox flies the coop and becomes a paid musician, and then a well-paid musician and then a highly successful musician. No, make that a rock star, entourage and antics included. Sam (played by Tim Meadows of Saturday Night Live fame) is part of the Dewey Cox band. Cox regularly walks in on him when he huddles together with women in dark corners to take drugs. Sam implores him to get away, that ‘you don’t want to mess with this, man,’ which of course awakes Cox’s curiosity. What follows is typical SNL-style humor (double-entendres and the like) and the results make one giddy with laughter. Go see Walk the Line, it’s great laughs! A SCREEN COMMENT 3 STARS movie.