Like Johnny Cash, he suffers the tragic death of a beloved older brother.

Like Michael Jackson, he has a pet chimp.

Like Bob Dylan, he dons a suit and skinny tie and appears at a contentious press conference.

He embodies every movie and real-life cliche about superstar musicians, from hard-scrabble beginning and multiple marriages to drug addiction, arrest, rehab, breakup and make-up with his bandmates, political awakening, eponymous TV show and eventual comeback. Plus lots of hair and clothing styles.

He is Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly), the fictional legend of "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," opening Friday. If you had to pick just one reel role model, it would be the Johnny Cash biopic "Walk the Line."

But there are nods to rock documentaries along with "Yellow Submarine," "Ray," any movie in which an actor ages 50 years or an understudy or unknown performs on the very night record-company scouts are in the audience.

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'Walk Hard : The Dewey Cox Story'

• Starring: John C. Reilly
• Rating: R for sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language

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That's what happens to Cox, a name that's a source of cheap laughs in this R-rated release. It opens with Dewey backstage, taking a minute to think about his entire life, which spins the action back to 1946 Alabama.

Dewey has an older, piano-playing brother, Nate, who announces, "Ain't nothin' horrible gonna happen today." So we know something horrible will and it leaves only one boy standing, sort of. The boys' dad blames Dewey for Nate's death and says, in just the first of many rebukes, "The wrong kid died."

Written by Judd Apatow and director Jake Kasdan, "Walk Hard" follows Dewey through the ups and downs of a musical career that purposely feels familiar. It nails the standard biopic formula while tapping into actor Reilly's skill as a real-life guitarist and accomplished performer as we saw in "Chicago" and "Prairie Home Companion."

He shares credit on five of the songs, with the strongest the title tune, "Walk Hard," written with Marshall Crenshaw, Apatow and Kasdan. The songwriters, however, have a weakness for juvenile lyrics or, more accurately, pregnant pauses as with "In my dreams you're blowing me some kisses." You can guess where that line breaks.

As silly as Reilly is, he brings a gravity to the role that a Will Ferrell might not (although I kept thinking of Ferrell, who does these wacky roles so well). Tim Meadows, Chris Parnell and Matt Besser play Dewey's bandmates, while Kristen Wiig and Jenna Fischer are among the women in his life.

An Apatow regular has a cameo and the worst Southern accent ever, and real and fake musicians turn up as recording legends.

I found "Walk Hard" amusing but only intermittently funny although no throats are slit or lives destroyed as with other holiday movies. Some moviegoers at a preview howled, and they didn't even stick around for the final shot after the credits of the "actual Dewey Cox, 2002."

Nice touch, boys.