It’s the comedy event of the millennium: The first true “Weird Al” Yankovic movie in more than 30 years. It is titled Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and it is a spoof of musical biopics like Ray or Walk the Line, starring Daniel Radcliffe as the greatest parody song maker in history. Al himself co-wrote and co-produced the film, which is inspired by a Funny or Die sketch from 2010 of the same name.
While a motion picture of this magnitude certainly feels worthy of a theatrical release, the movie is not going to theaters. It’s not going to Netflix or Amazon or HBO either. You can’t buy it on iTunes. If you’re one of the millions upon millions of “Weird Al”-coholics out there, there’s just one way to watch this movie: On the Roku Channel, the ad-supported streaming channel available on Roku players and TVs.
But here is the good news, while a Roku player is probably the easiest place to find the Roku Channel and Weird, you don’t need a physical Roku to watch the channel. A press release for Weird: The Al Yankovic Story notes that you can find the Roku Channel “for FREE on Roku devices, the Web, iOS and Android devices, Amazon Fire TV and select Samsung TVs. No subscription required.”
Weird The Al Yankovic StoryRoku Channel
What you will need is a Roku account, which you can get (for free) by signing up at the Roku Channel’s website. Alternately, you can download the Roku Channel app for an Android or iOS device, or add it to your Amazon Fire TV or a Samsung TV and create a Roku Channel subscription there. They don’t ask you to prove you own a Roku, or to provide your credit card information.
Once you create an account, you’ll be able to watch any of the channel’s offerings on your web browser or device — including, by the way, the short-lived The Weird Al Show from 1997. And starting this Friday, you’ll also be able to watch Weird: The Al Yankovic Story that way as well. It’s really as simple as that.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is a winking mockery of the stale biopic formula, and features an extremely inaccurate retelling the life story of Weird Al. How did he discover the accordion? Why did he become a song parodist? What did real-world musicians think of his spoofs? You won’t learn any of that in the movie, because is a heavily fictionalized (and very silly) version of Yankovic’s journey. Here’s the trailer for the film, which was directed and co-written by Eric Appel, who also directed the original Funny or Die short.
The film features a ton of stars, including Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna and Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, plus a slew of surprise comedian cameos (often playing other comedians and celebrities from the 1980s, when Al’s career first started taking off).
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story will premiere on the Roku Channel this Friday, November 4.
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