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Shelf Beauties |
Tenacious
D in It’s the
movie
Jack Black fans and Tenacious D fans have been waiting for, but the
rest of us
can buy tickets to Casino Royale
or Déjà
Vu to be much more satisfied. Jack Black stars
as JB – a rock and roll lover who wants to play in the
greatest rock band
EVER. While he
might not be the most
talented musician and singer, he has heart and energy, so JB runs away
from his
oppressive home after Ronnie James Dio appears to him in a poster and
tells the
young man to fulfill his destiny by heading to Will this new
band achieve greatness? Will
they be
able to win open mic night to pay the rent? Tenacious
D
seems to be caught in between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, it has the makings of an
outlandish, wacky screwball comedy with main characters suffering from
delusions of grandeur much like The Blues
Brothers. On the other
hand, it’s not imaginative enough or well written enough to
pull it off. The
movie starts off fine enough as a silly,
laugh-filled rock opera, but, eventually, drops that promising premise
to
become just another stoner comedy running on attitude instead of good
dialogue,
funny plot twists and jokes you want to repeat to friends. Some jokes are
funny as we learn about JB and KG’s childhood, how they got
the name Tenacious
D and other mysteries long time fans have wondered about for years. However, Black, Gass and
co-writer/director
Liam Lynch must have run out of gas as they went deeper and deeper into
the
story as the jokes tend to be more scatological than hilarious and
insightful. Sure,
we get plenty of cameo
appearances (and should have had more big time rock gods to play into
the story
about rock and rollers) and Black and Gass do their best to entertain
us during
their musical numbers, but the movie falls flat from the middle to the
end as
the plot focuses on what should be a much more exciting and imaginative
quest
to find the Pick of Destiny, which could be the key to them finding
greatness. Black does his
best to try to salvage the movie, but it feels like he has to revert
back to
his mugging days where he acts like Bill Murray without the talent. In this case, he
doesn’t have the material,
but, since he co-wrote the movie with Gass and Lynch, it’s
kinda his fault he
doesn’t have the material.
Like Black,
Gass tries hard and finds some moments to make us laugh, but the whole
material
thing rears its ugly head with him, too.
Tenacious
D in
The Pick of Destiny should be bigger, wilder, funnier and
more adventurous than
what we see here. Instead,
it looks like
it was done on the cheap side, with a script that needed more work. 1
½ Waffles (Out
Of 4) Tenacious D in The Pick Of Destiny is rated R for pervasive language, sexual content, and drug use.
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