Issue 149

Tenacious D In The Pick of Destiny

20th November 2006

The latest offering from rock duo Jack Black and Kyle, aka 'Tenacious D', can best be likened to a collection of their songs. While frequent profanities, Zeppelin-esque guitar riffs, and jokes about boobs raise smirks and out loud laughter, and they certainly do, the content soon becomes more than a little repetitive and frankly, just a bit dull.

The film tells the tale how the 'D' came to be, opening with Jack Black's young JB fleeing his Christian upbringing and small town existence for Venice Beach to pursue his dream of rock godhood. Here he encounters guitar virtuoso KG , and, after a run-in with "A Clockwork Orange"-like quartet of hooligans, KG takes JB in and puts him through a rock training regimen infused with "Kung Fu" overtones, coaching the essentials of the 'power slide', 'owning the crowd' and of course, 'cock push-ups'. And so the band forms, and their pursuit of global rock stardom begins. What soon becomes become apparent, however, is that to enter the rock lengends hall of fame they shall have to locate and steal…the 'Pick of Destiny', a guitar pick forged from the tooth of Lucifer himself, with the power to give its user Satanic rock capabilities.

Cameo appearances from Ben Stiller (also executive producer) and Tim Robbins provide comedic moments more by association than performance, though the casting of Meatloaf was inspired. His role as Jack's God fearing, rock 'n' roll detesting father provides the film with its only real moment of great comedy, as a young but equally expressive JB shocks his devoutly christian family with a rendition of 'Kickapoo'; typically foul mouthed but equally hilarious. Dad promptly takes a belt to JB's rear end and launches into a full throttle Meatloaf-esque rock tune, banning his son from ever listening to the Devil's music again.

Unfortunately, that mastery of ironic casting didn't extend to Tim Robbins, whose 'weird rock guy' character seemed to have no place at all, and like many of the scenes within the film, was included merely to pad out the already short, sub ninety minute running time.

After its impressive opening, In the Pick of destiny very much loses its way, meandering from Jack Black gag to Jack Black gag with no discernable direction. Devout fans of both Black and Tenacious D will no doubt find both the film and the songs amusing, but only the die hard amongst them will find enough entetainment to stay laughing or indeed even chuckling for the films entirity.

Jack Black is a funny man, and has proven he can lead a film with School of Rock, a brilliantly funny film. But in Tenacious D The Pick of Destiny, he runs out of ideas far too quickly, and relies on repetition and more swearing to see out the film.

The self proclaimed 'greatest rock band in the world' have fallen well short of creating the greatest film on earth. Perhaps this was just a tribute.

James Hay