No Spur to ‘Pick’ the Sides of Intent
By bukkhead | June 8, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘THE PICK OF DESTINY’
Written by Jack Black and Kyle Gass
Directed by Liam Lynch
Rated R
93 mins.
2 1/2 stars
I really wanted to like The Pick of Destiny. I liked the first Tenacious D album, without the benefit of having seen them on HBO or whatever it was. Eventually I did rent the Tenacious D video, and that should have been a warning. I think maybe there’s something to be said about this whole “reader response” form of criticism, in that with just the album, I had an incomplete picture, and so I gave them the benefit of the doubt and filled in the rest myself.
Same with this new movie. I bought the album well in advance, and I think it’s great. It’s not just your average Weird-Al-esque parody album. It’s got some genuinely kick-ass music (“Car Chase City,” “History,” “Beezleboss”) that I listen to when I’m in the gym or just in a get-up-and-move kinda mood. Whatever Jack Black and Kyle Gass may be saying about old-school rock, they do rock, plain and simple. That they add a layer of humor over the top of it reflects, for me, a kind of genius.
And then I found out the movie was directed by Liam Lynch, and I got all goose-bumply. Liam did Sifl & Ollie, which is truly brilliant, and hilarious, and did I say brilliant? It’s the kind of good I find hard to describe, just because I could never do it justice with words, and if you watch it and don’t like it, you and I are just on a different wave-length and communication won’t be effective anyway.
So I finally rented the movie, really hoping that it would not just be what those videos were from the first album, what with Liam in on the action, and… well, it was not so good. Oh sure, there’s some funny moments. But they tend to drag things out. And its gets predictable. And the cameos are too dependent on the fact that they are cameos. I got distracted by Ben Stiller, and Tim Robbins: those guys are both fin actors, when they have something to do except play cartoons. Meatloaf did a good job, but then he was in and out of the movie quick-like.
In the end, I have to ask myself, did the visuals, lacking as they were, take away from the music? That’s easy to answer for “Car Chase City,” since it was just back-ground music. (The answer is no, it did not detract). But watching the on-stage performance of “History,” unfortunately juxtaposed the rock with the attempted humor of a band that sucks. That’s supposed to be irony, I suppose. Or watching the final showdown with Satan—there’s a choir singing in the background; why didn’t angels come down to help defeat Beezleboss?
All told, Liam and JB and KG just didn’t have an hour and a half worth of stuff. Maybe an hour. And listen, I don’t mean cut out thirty minutes worth of scenes, I’m saying cut every scene by a third. Except the sasquatch scene—toss that one completely.
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