Hock the Line

The biggest laughs come from players who know how to hit their sketch-comedy marks quickly and move on: from Tim Meadows as Dewey's drummer, whose antidrug warnings inevitably turn into a can't-resist come-hither, to Harold Ramis as Mad magazine's idea of a Jewish record mogul, more likely to cut foreskins than 45s. The rest of the movie blows through opportunities like Mötley Crüe through coke money. It takes almost a perverse determination to put Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Jason Schwartzman, and Justin Long in a room together as the Beatles, then give them so little to do that even Eddie Vedder's cameo as an awards-show presenter smokes them. (The DVD extras will almost certainly be better.) Walk Hard limps soft—but if John C. Reilly turns up anywhere onstage in your town, go. If there's anything America needs now, it's more Cox.