Review of Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008) by Brian M — 31 Oct 2009

This documentary (or rather, rockumentary) depicts the Canadian heavy metal band Anvil which achieved moderate success in the 80s, the film picks up with the band at a crossroads after twenty years of failure.

The movie shows the band embarking on a pretty lousy European tour they commenced after taking a vacation from their day jobs. After this they are shown cutting their thirteenth album and trying to sell it to major labels.

Many have compared this to This is Spinal Tap, which is misleading first because it?s a genuine documentary about a real band and secondly because it isn?t very funny. Of course the movie does invite this comparison when it chooses to focus on a dial being turned to eleven and on a trip the band takes to Stonehenge, but perhaps the better film to compare it to is Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which shows a significantly more successful band dealing with a ton of comparable problems.

I think a lot of the appeal this movie has had plays into a certain sense of nostalgic entitlement that could also be seen to some extent in films like The King of Kong and The Wrestler, movies which deal with people trying to return to their 80s glory days after years of failure at a cheesy endeavor.

As I watched the film I couldn?t help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, the band kind of deserves the fate they?ve been dealt. The music played over the course of the movie is not great and the album they?re tying to make sounds really dated, it sounds to me like there?s more involved in the band?s lack of success than the world conspiring against them, these are not thoughts that should be going through your head while watching a movie that so desperately wants to be about underdogs overcoming adversity.