Producers: Al Yankovic, Michael Farah, Joe Farrell, Whitney Hodack, Tim Headington, Lia Buman and Max Silva   Director: Eric Appel   Screenplay: Eric Appel and Al Yankovic   Cast: Daniel Radcliffe, Evan Rachel Wood, Rainn Wilson, Toby Huss, Julianne Nicholson, David Bloom, Richard Aaron Anderson, Spencer Treat Clark, Jack Lancaster, Tommy O’Brien,     Distributor: The Roku Channel

Grade: C

It stands to reason that a biographical movie about pop song parodist Weird Al Yankovic would itself be a parody of cinematic musical biographies that follow a rise-fall-redemption arc and play fast and loose with facts.  It’s also appropriate that it should be dumb and juvenile, like Weird Al’s numbers were.

But unfortunately the movie by Yankovic and co-writer/director Eric Appel, and narrated by Diedrich Bader as “contemporary” Al, follows the template of Yankovic’s songs in another respect.  They were short, but even at a few minutes they usually ran out of steam before they ended.  “Weird” isn’t short, but otherwise follows that pattern: it works for a while, but then gets duller and duller as it aims for bigger targets.  It’s the old half-a-loaf story.

The initial “rise” act is actually pretty funny, in the way that a film like “Airplane!” was.  The scenes involving young Al (Richard Aaron Anderson) being berated by his manically belligerent father Nick (Toby Huss), who brutalizes the poor accordion salesman (Thomas Lennon) trying to peddle his wares, and of Al taking up the instrument secretly with the help of his mother Mary (Julianne Nicholson), work.  So does the segment showing Al as a teen (David Bloom) wowing his classmates at a “forbidden” polka party and then (now played by Daniel Radcliffe) discovering his calling in a breakfast epiphany with his roomies (Spencer Treat Clark, Jack Lancaster and Tommy O’Brien), who help him record his first song and become his backup band.  His instant discovery by oddball radio DJ Dr. Demento (Rainn Wilson) is engaging, and even a pool party featuring guests like Wolfman Jack (Jack Black), Andy Warhol (Conan O’Brien), Pee-wee Herman (Jorma Taccone), Tiny Tim (Demetri Martin), Divine (Nina West), Alice Cooper (Akiva Schaffer), Gallagher (Paul F. Tompkins), John Deacon (David Dastmalchian) and Salvador Dalí (Emo Philips) is loonily amusing.  Up to this point Radcliffe and his cohorts keep things afloat with their doggedly deadpan approach to the ridiculous material.

As Yankovic’s star rises, though, the movie itself deflates.  That’s especially the case when Madonna (Evan Rachel Wood) enters the picture as a gold-digger who romances Al in order to benefit from the inevitable career “bump” that supposedly occurs whenever he parodies a singer’s song.  This “fall” part of the scenario, which also includes the notion that Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” was actually a parody of “Eat It” rather than the reverse, grows increasingly tedious, especially after notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar (Arturo Castro) shows up and Al enters Sylvester Stallone “Rambo” mode.  And things don’t improve much when his reunion with his long-estranged parents reveals why Nick was so fiercely opposed to his taking up the accordion in the first place; what’s meant to be a hilarious capper is instead a groaner.

This isn’t unusual: as many movies that tries to emulate the Zucker brothers-Jim Abrahams formula (and they themselves in some of their later efforts) proved, it’s difficult to sustain this kind of zaniness over the full length of a feature.  The fact that “Weird” manages to do so for its first half is kind of remarkable. 

You also have to admire Radcliffe’s commitment to the idiocy.  Throughout he plays things with the droll earnestness required to keep the goofy fantasy afloat.  The other actors follow suit, even as the script loses its footing.  And it’s chockablock with cameos to keep viewers on their toes, not only in the pool sequence but elsewhere, with folks like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Quinta Brunson, Patton Oswalt, Michael McKean, Scott Aukerman, Dot-Marie Jones and Josh Groban popping up along with Will Forte, who’s the obsequious brother of a record company mogul that Yankovic himself plays in heavy makeup.  (Yankovic also does “his” singing.)  This is a modestly-budgeted picture, but the technical team headed by production designer Dan Butts, costumer Wendy Benbrook and cinematographer Ross Riege give it the bright, glossy look of basic cable fare, while editor Jamie Kennedy moves the narrative as smoothly as possible from silly episode to silly episode, while the background score by Leo Birenberg and Zach Robinson adds to the perkiness.

“Weird” is funny so long as it doesn’t aim for the skies, but when it goes for the topper, it comes down to earth with a thud.         

Producer: Kelly McCormick, David Leitch and Guy Danella   Director: Tommy Wirkola   Screenplay: Pat Casey and Josh Miller   Cast: David Harbour, John Leguizamo, Alex Hassell, Alexis Louder, Leah Brady, Beverly D’Angelo, Edi Patterson, Cam Gigandet, Alexander Elliot, André Eriksen, Mitra Suri, Brendan Fletcher, Sean Skene and Mike Dopud    Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C

This mixture of violence and schmaltz from director Tommy Wirkola (“Dead Snow,” “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters”) rivals “Fatman” as the oddest holiday movie of recent years.  There have been slasher movies in which the killer dressed in a Santa suit, of course, as well as the anti-Santa of “Krampus,” but in these two the actual Santa Claus is turned into an action hero of sorts, as adept with his fists and weaponry as he is with a sleigh and his bag of presents.  Many viewers will probably hoot at the transformation, especially when done up as slickly as it is here; others may find it rather repellent.  It’s certainly not subtle.

But “Violent Night” isn’t content with being an action movie.  It wants simultaneously to be a sweet, saccharine paean to old-time values.  So it has a second hero—a tyke named Trudy (Leah Brady), who’s definitely on the nice list of Santa (David Harbour).  She’s just seen “Home Alone,” and is more than able to help Santa defeat a bunch of commando home invaders led by a nasty fellow named Jimmy Martinez (John Leguizamo) who calls himself Scrooge (he also, like the boss in “Reservoir Dogs,” assigns other code names to the members of his crew, in this case holiday-related monikers). 

And what a home!  It’s actually the palatial estate of Gertrude (Beverly D’Angelo), the sarcastic, heavily-drinking matriarch of the obscenely wealthy and powerful Lightstone clan.  Assembled there for Christmas Eve are her grown children, mousy Jason (Alex Hassell) and greedy Alva (Edi Patterson), along with their families.  Trudy is Jason’s daughter by his estranged wife Linda (Alexis Louder), who’s there for reasons of family solidarity; Alva brings her smug teen son Bert, short for the ridiculous Bertrude (Alexander Elliot), a would-be influencer constantly broadcasting himself on his phone, and a date, a martial-arts movie star named Morgan (Cam Gigandet), who wants Gertrude to finance his latest picture.  (A brochure pitching the deal is, in fact, his gift to her.)

Santa arrives during their get-together, having hoisted a few at a bar where he complained about how materialistic kids have gotten.  He’s resting alone in a vibrating recliner and enjoying the homemade cookies and Gertrude’s alcohol stock as his sleigh and reindeer wait on the roof.  Then Scrooge and his minions take over, slaughtering the Lightstone staff and security detail.  The object is to steal the three hundred million bucks Gertrude has embezzled from the U.S. government in a diplomacy-related ruse.  He has to remove it from a vault under the house before the Lightstone “extraction force” headed by hardnosed Commander Thorp (Mike Dopud) arrives, supposedly to save the day.

Scrooge holds everyone hostage, but Trudy escapes and hides out in the attic, using a “magic” walkie-talkie to contact Santa, who’d have preferred to fly off undetected but was trapped when his reindeer abandoned him.  He’ll confront villain after villain in protracted, bloody encounters wielding the sledgehammer that was his weapon of choice during his days as some sort of medieval warlord (don’t ask—he doesn’t understand the “Christmas magic” himself), while Trudy takes on a couple of Scrooge’s commandos (butler André Eriksen and icy blonde Mitra Suri) using tactics similar to but more graphically cruel than any of the slapstick traps Macaulay Culkin ever employed (which, in truth, were pretty wicked themselves).  A few commandos in the crew (like psycho Brendan Fletcher and sullen Sean Skene), which turns out to contain some unexpected allies, will meet their fates at the hands of other members of the Lightstone clan.  Naturally things come down to a final face-off between Santa and Scrooge, who vows to end Christmas once and for all, but not to worry: Santa survives, though it takes what might be called a Tinkerbelle “I believe!” moment, though “Miracle on 34^th Street” is also an obvious marker.

Harbour clearly enjoys playing Santa Grouch, though he’s hard pressed to manage the whiplash switches from growling cynic to avuncular charmer, and Brady is cute as a button.  The big loser is Leguizamo, whose snarling, one-note villain is boring from his first appearance.  The rest of the cast struggle with the caricatures they’re playing, but Gigandet, Elliot, Eriksen, Suri and Fletcher have their moments.  D’Angelo and Patterson, surprisingly, come off flat.

Though modestly budgeted, “Violent Night” looks pretty rich, with special effects that are cheekily reminiscent of “lovable” Christmas movies of years gone by. Roger Fires’s production design is actually lush, and Matthew Weston’s cinematography elegant, except when he and editor Jim Page have to go into dark, dank mode during the many fight scenes, which go on much too long and often get explicitly gruesome enough to earn (along with some tough language) the R rating.  This is not a family movie, though some parents will probably watch it with their kids as all revel in the gore and supposedly witty banter.  Dominic Lewis’s score mixes holiday cheer with the usual action-movie clichés.

Sad to say, “Violent Night” may epitomize the sort of Christmas movie that will appeal to our jaded cinematic age, the pratfalls of “Home Alone” replaced by the carnage of a Liam Neeson movie even as it tries awkwardly to retain a sense of icky holiday sweetness.  But the idea of a “ho-ho-ho” cut off by a throat-slashing will not be everyone’s cup of eggnog.