Ups and Downs: The Story of Dewey Cox

2007 At the music awards ceremony, an assistant is looking for singer Dewey Cox, who is just about to perform. Through effort, he is found leaning his hand against the wall, and his classmate Sam explains: Dewey remembers his whole life.

1946 The Cox family lives on a farm in the city of Springberry, Alabama . During the humorous battle on the machete with the more talented brother Nate, who is destined to the musical path, 8-year-old Dewey accidentally chops him in half. Due to this moral injury, Dewey loses her sense of smell . Soon Ma sends his son to the store for oil and a candle, where he meets blues musicians and plays the guitar for the first time.

1953 After a controversial and successful performance at the local talent show with the song Take my hand , 14-year-old Dewey decides to leave his father's house with his 12-year-old girlfriend Edith. They marry, make love and after 8 months become happy parents. Working as a janitor at a nightly Negro club, Cox replaces singer Bobby Shad before joining and impresses heads of the entire US music industry with Hasidan Jews in performing a song (Mama) .

In the recording studio, Dewey, along with his musicians, records rockabilly “That's Amore,” but the executive director writes off the song for scrap and calls the singer incompetent. However, Dewey takes the right to the last attempt and writes down the song “Walk Hard” (rus. Stepping Hard), created thanks to his speech to Edith.

In 35 minutes, the song becomes a hit, and Dewey becomes a rock and roll star . In the course of one of the concerts, the performer discovers Sam in the back room of drummer Sam from the groupies , who after a dispute offer him to try marijuana . Internal fault and drug problems lead to his betrayal of Edith with women and men. From his father, the singer learns that his mother died while dancing to his song on the radio. All this is even more annoying to the musician, who, thanks to cocaine, makes his music louder and more similar to the punk rock that has not yet existed. After joining the vocalist Darlene Madison, Dewey makes several hits. Their relationship is getting stronger, and the singer marries her with the still existing marriage with Edith. Eventually, Dewey Cox's lies are revealed and both girls throw him. The musician leaves all his children to his first wife, taking a chimpanzee for himself, in which he will soon be disappointed (because of her obsession with “only fruit and masturbation ”). Dewey is caught shopping for drugs from an undercover police officer, after which he spends time in prison and a hospital before Darlene returns.

1966 Dewey Cox and Darlene live in California . Against the background of current events, the singer is completely immersed in politics, recording songs in support of the rights of women, dwarfs and everyone else ( Dear mr. President ). The press finds similarities in his creative approach to Bob Dylan .

During a visit to India to a local guru, Dewey, under the persuasion of the members of the group The Beatles, takes LSD , due to which he again loses touch with reality and enters the hallucinogenic world inspired by the Yellow Submarine . The singer becomes obsessed with the Megalo-Roman project - recording his Black Sheep song (Russian. Black Sheep), on which he has been working in his own studio for eight months with 137 musicians. Companions in the musical group do not share his view on music and tyranny, because of which the team disintegrates. Darlene also leaves, unable to bear the madness of his beloved and his problems with drugs. Dewey again goes to a sanatorium, where Nate’s ghost complains about his weakness and advises again to write songs.

1970s Dewey Cox runs his own entertainment show on CBS . However, he cannot write at least some song, being content with disco- tracks of previous hits and self-repetitions (like the song Starman) (in the director's version, the performer marries for the third time Sharyl Tigs). The matured Nate visits his brother again and indicates the need to improve relations with his father and still write a musical masterpiece. Dewey returns to the farm, and gives an emotional speech in front of the parent, despite which Pa causes him to fight on the machete. In the course of a difficult duel, the parent accidentally cuts himself in half, but before he dies, he forgives Dewey and asks him to be a better father for his children than he himself. After that, Cox on the emotions spreads his mansion and drives out the hangers-on, including.

The next day, he is visited by one of the illegitimate children, after which the singer decides to focus on his many descendants, with whom he leaves for his own ranch in Tennessee . In 1992, Darlene returned to him, already divorced and lonely. Dewey tells her about everything that happened to him after their break, after which his sense of smell returns to him and they remarry.

In 2007, the singer's home is visited by the son of Il'hai'ma Dreidl with pleasant news: Dewey Cox became popular again thanks to a young audience who discovered him through the use of the Walk Hard sample from rapper Lil 'Nutzzak. At first the musician is dissatisfied with what is happening, but soon he learns about receiving a music award for his contribution to music. At first, Dewey is not ready to go on stage again, but with the support of his relatives he finds the strength to unite his own group and participate in the show. There he performs the song “Beautiful Ride”, in which he was able to tell about his past life in the format of a musical masterpiece. Further, the credits indicate that the singer died three minutes after his performance.

After the credits, the short black-and-white clip “The Real Dewey Cox, April 16, 2002” begins (the singer is played by the same John C. Riley, speaking in a heavier voice).

• John C. Riley - Dew Cox.
  • Conner Rayburn - Young Dewey Cox
• Kristen Wiig - Edith
• Raymond J. Barry - Pa Cox
• Margo Martindale - Ma Cox
• Jenna Fisher - Darlene Madison
  • Angela Correa - Darlene's voice in songs
• Tim Meadows - Sam McPherson
• Chris Parnell - Theo
• Matt Besser - Dave
• Chip Hormess - Nate Cox
  • John Hill - adult Nate Cox (not listed in the credits)
• David Edwards is an old blues singer
• Paul Bates is a nightclub manager.
• David Krumholtz - Schwarzberg
• Craig Robinson - Bobby Shed
• Harold Ramis - Il'hai'm
• Simon Helberg - Dreydle Il'haim
• Philip Rosenthal - Mazeltof
• Martin Starr - Schmendrick
• John Michael Higgins - sound engineer
• Ed Helms - concert manager
• Jane Lynch - Journalist Gale
• Angela Little - Beth Anne
• Skyler Gisondo - Duford Dewdrop / Dewey Cox Jr.
• Luri Poston - Cox's baby
• Jack McBrayer - DJ
• Nat Faxon - Show Manager
• Howard Rance - Priest
• Odette Yustman - a girl with a shoal of grass
• Frankie Municipalities - Buddy Holi
• John Ennis - Big Bopper
• Jack White - Elvis Presley
• Adam Hershman as Jerry Garcia
• The Temptations band members play themselves
• Eddie Vedder in the role of himself
• Jackson Brown in the role of himself
• Jewel as herself
• Ghostface Killah - in the role of himself
• Lyle Lovett - In The Role Of Himself
• Jerry Bednob - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
• Cheryl Tiegs - in the role of herself
• Paul Rudd - John Lennon
• Jack Black - Paul Macartney
• Justin Long - George Harrison
• Jason Schwartzman - Ringo Starr
• Patrick Duffy - in the role of himself
• Morgan Fairchild as herself
• Cheryl Ladd - in the role of herself

In the world hire with a budget of $ 35 million, the film collected 20.6 million (of which 18.3 million was received in North America, the world rolled out 2.2 million), thereby becoming commercially disastrous. In the debut week of rentals in North America, the picture collected $ 4.174 million when rolled out in 2,650 theaters (9th in box office) ^[1]

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on April 8, 2008. ^[2] More than 263 thousand DVD copies were sold on premiere weekend, which gave $ 5.1 million in revenue. By May 2010, DVD sales totaled $ 15.664 million. ^[3]

• “Ups and Downs: The Story of Dewey Cox” on IMDB
• The original soundtrack "Ups and downs: The Story of Dewey Cox" on Yandex. Music