'Weird: The Al Yankovic Story' is a truly bizarre movie that lives up to its name

“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” is like eating ice cream for breakfast.

Sure, it sounds like a good idea, and for a while it actually is. But eventually it starts to feel like too much.

“Weird” is a good title for director Eric Appel’s feature debut (he co-wrote the film with the real Yankovic). For instance, remember that time Yankovic, famous for parodying songs, and his girlfriend Madonna got into a gun fight with drug kingpin Pablo Escobar?

No? You probably don’t because it never happened. But it happens here, in a madcap mixing of the occasional biographically correct information with absurd flights of fancy.

So that’s weird.

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Danielle Radcliffe plays the adult Weird Al. Which is kind of ... well, you know

Daniel Radcliffe plays the adult Al. That’s kind of weird, too. Unexpected, anyway.

I know it’s unfair to keep talking about Radcliffe playing Harry Potter when he was younger — he’s enjoyed plenty of cool and oddball roles since then — but there’s just a nice bit of nuttiness to the idea of it.

There’s also a long line of celebrity cameos — Conan O’Brien as Andy Warhol, Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey, Patton Oswalt as a reporter, Lin-Manuel Miranda as a doctor and more. Yankovich himself plays a record-company executive.

That’s also a little, well, you know.

Blurring the line between reality and just plain bizarre

The film takes a straight biopic approach while residing in a kind of alternate universe.

Young Al grows up in a home where his mother Mary (Julianne Nicholson) and father Nick (Toby Huss) assume that their son will end his dreams of changing the lyrics to existing songs while playing the accordion and work at the factory where Nick works.

No one knows what they make in the factory, only that it mangles its employees on a frequent basis; Nick himself has lost a hand there.

When an accordion salesman (Thomas Lennon) stops by the house, Nick beats him almost to death. He’s serious about not letting Al pursue a career in music.

It’s not so great for Al, but worse for the accordion salesman.

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Things really hit the fan when Al sneaks out to go to a polka party — and his clandestine accordion skills are revealed. He leaves home and goes to college. One day while making his roommates sandwiches while “My Sharona” plays on the radio, inspiration strikes. Al turns it into “My Bologna” and his life is forever changed.

So, it is the truth, in increasingly over-the-top ways.

Then hyperbole spins out of control, but commitment pays off

Soon, Al is the biggest-selling artist in the history of the world, a cultural icon. Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood), seen here as a scheming, selfish parasite who wants to latch onto Al so that he will parody one of her songs, giving her records sales the “Yankovich bump” that Al’s mentor — dementor — Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson) talks about.

Somehow they run afoul of Escobar (Arturo Castro), and things really go off the rails, with Al becoming a kind of action-adventure star.

The film’s saving grace is how committed it is to the bit. And it is, really, one bit that lasts 1 hour and 48 minutes. But the cast is all in, particularly Radcliffe. He plays Al as both a committed artist and as an artist committed to rewriting other people’s songs — something that bemuses him, and that Radcliffe captures in every line reading.

It’s a neat trick to play someone seriously when the character doesn’t take himself all that seriously, but Radcliffe does a nice job of it.

Eventually the absurdity wears you down. It’s just too much — but then again, that’s the point.

And give Appel points for never coming off the bit. Trying to wend its way back to reality would have killed the whole vibe of the film, something akin to explaining a joke.

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'Weird: The Al Yankovich Story' 3.5 stars

Great ★★★★★ Good ★★★★

Fair ★★★ Bad ★★ Bomb ★

Director: Eric Appel.

Cast: Daniel Radcliff, Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson.

Rating: Not rated.

Note: Streaming on the Roku Channel on Nov. 4.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk. Subscribe to the weekly movies newsletter.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: 'Weird: The Al Yankovic Story' movie review: Of course it's weird