10 Box Office Flops Much Better Than Their Reputations

6. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Budget: $35 million

Worldwide Gross: $20.5 million

Fans of stupid, nearly-pointless humour will find plenty to like in this spoof of the modern music biopic. No, there's not a lot of depth in the jokes, and the story is pretty much a note-for-note retread of Walk the Line, but the one thing The Dewey Cox Story accomplishes better than Meet the Spartans or any installment of Scary Movie is add something to movie its spoofing.

Take, for example, the running gag of Dewey becoming addicted to whichever drug happens to be the cool thing at the moment (a frequent trope in music biopics) is heightened by the fact that it's literally always his drummer "accidentally" introducing him to it, then warning him not to use them while listing all of the benefits of the drug like it's one of those "What's your biggest weakness?" questions in a job interview (i.e. "I'm too hardworking.")

And of course, there's such an extraordinary collection of cameos that as soon as a joke starts to wear thin, the whole thing is enlivened by the presence of Jack White as Elvis Paul Rudd, Jack Black, Justin Long, and Jason Schwartzman as the Beatles.

It's not everyone's cup of tea, certainly, but even those who felt Talladega Nights was too obnoxious would probably be surprised at how well they toned down some of those more unpalatable elements for this one.