Before he became a bona fide movie star, Jack Black had cult fame as a member of a mock heavy-metal duo called Tenacious D. At least I think the D is supposed to be “mock,” although their mastery of rock cliches is so complete that it’s sometimes hard to tell.
Black and Kyle Gass have performed live as Tenacious D, on disc, and in some wonderfully overwrought music videos. Their film, “Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny,” purports to tell the story of how the band came to be. It’s a cheap-looking, shaggy comedy that contains a few good laughs.
The inspired prologue introduces us to the young rock-and-rolling JB (that’s Black’s character, played as a child by the same funny actor who played Black’s younger self in “Nacho Libre,” Troy Gentile). He argues with his father – who else but Meat Loaf? – in an all-singing sequence crowned by an appearance by Ronnie James Dio, sometime Black Sabbath rocker.
Then we skip ahead to JB’s fateful meeting with KG (Gass), a bald, rotund, herb-friendly slacker who can play guitar with the mean dexterity of the devil himself. Or something like that.
Black and Gass have some funny “Wayne’s World”-style scenes together, or at least Black has some funny scenes, as Gass mostly plays straight man. The story leads them to locating a guitar pick carved out of one of Satan’s horns, which, it turns out, Satan would like to have back.
The story isn’t much, and extended cameos by Tim Robbins, Ben Stiller and Amy Poehler provide fewer laughs than they should. I did enjoy a sublimely silly sequence in which JB eats some magic mushrooms and finds himself dancing with Sasquatch and floating down a Strawberry River. (Yes, there’s a lot of druggie humor in the film.)
The reason to see the movie is to appreciate how exact the parody of the heavy-metal world is, especially the songs of Tenacious D. In this arena, Black and Gass are letter-perfect; every pretentious lyric and strangled guitar lick is exactly on the money – surpassing even the admirable efforts of Spinal Tap.
And Jack Black continues to be a comic buzz saw, greedily devouring any scene he’s in. Black has a special talent for high-pitched exasperation, and he gets to express that side of himself frequently in this movie. Long may he rawk.
Kyle Gass (left) and Jack Black star in “Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny.”
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