Liam Lynch
Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
By Travis Mackenzie Hoover

As a Jack Black loyalist, I’d really like to tell you that this is the ideal showcase for Tenacious D and their special brand of power comedy. Alas, the writing just isn’t there and both members of the band are left high and dry.

The film is an origin story, with JB on the run from his rock-hating parents (including a musical moment from dad Meat Loaf), meeting overbearing street busker Kyle Gass by chance. After it is revealed that Gass really doesn’t know Ronnie James Dio, the two must pool their wits to become the greatest band in the world. Meaning: they must steal the “pick of destiny,” which is fashioned from a demon’s tooth, from the Rock’n’Roll History Museum. But will the utilisation of the pick cheapen the effort of their music? And will passing sorority girls break up the tenuous union of Black and Gass?

The stoner gags and general scruffiness are par for the course, but the movie never reaches the epic ambitions of the D’s ironic riffage. Not only does it look slapped together (the timing is way, way off) but the jokes aren’t taken far enough — promising ideas often slam on the brakes just before they flower into something truly ludicrous. Even a mushroom trip with a flying Bigfoot never quite takes off; it’s just a couple of dudes in rugs with some feeble CGI greasing the wheels.

Black is generally the man I want to be when I grow up, but even the less grotesque comedy of School of Rock is better articulated and more enjoyable than this, a film that feels like it’s been ripped off the night before and does little to challenge that thesis.

(Alliance Atlantis)
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