BEFORE: Well, maybe this is what the Chain had in mind for me, giving me wartime movies with Bruce Willis on a weekend that wasn't even CLOSE to Veterans Day or Memorial Day - I've hit another school-based film, and today is the first weekday after Labor Day. For many kids this could be the first day of a new school year. OK, so in New York City the first day of school is coming up on Thursday, 9/10 - but I guess this varies from state to state. In some places, maybe it's today, but your experience may vary. Probably it's sometime this week though.
Joe Manganiello carries over from "Sabotage".
THE PLOT: Two friends try to form a heavy metal band with a cellist in time for their school's Battle of the Bands.
AFTER: This school film wasn't bad, I'm not saying it blew me away, but it was fine. Most filmmakers today fall back on so many old tropes concerning high-school kids that it often feels like nobody's trying to do anything new, they're just making new versions of old John Hughes movies like "The Breakfast Club" or "Pretty in Pink". "Mean Girls" was made twice and there were a ton of "Mean Girls" plastics clones as well, because once Hollywood gets a good idea they just keep driving that down into the ground. Then there's the load of depressing films like "Thirteen" and "Eighth Grade" that just take delight in showing how messed up the current generation of school kids is, which of course we know that they are. Sorry, my generation used up all the fossil fuels and polluted the planet with toxic waste, but just look at the opportunities we gave you young kids, you can all study chemistry and engineering and make careers for yourselves by cleaning it all up!
But yeah, I was raised during the peak teen movie years, between John Hughes movies and "Back to the Future", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off", "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Dead Poet's Society". "Risky Business" and "Heathers", come on! The next wave of high-school students then had "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Election", "Ghost World" and "Rushmore". By then I'd been out of high-school for a while, but I still paid attention to those movies, call me nostalgic. What did the next generation after that have, "Superbad" and "Booksmart"? "22 Jump Street" and "The Spectacular Now"? "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"? Sorry, but it's all just not as good as the old days were. But, you know, I'm like three generations removed from the high-school experience - there are people my age who might have grandchildren, but I don't. I listen to stories about what my niece and nephew encounter in high school and wow, there's just so much pressure to succeed now, and to make sure your extra-curriculars line up with what the recruiters want to see. I just tried to do my best in class and not worry too much about it, because I had my eye on film school and I didn't even want to think about making movies until I got there.
Making music is maybe a little similar to that - if you've got musical talent, do you really even need college? Billy Joel dropped out of high school because he knew he wanted to perform, and school was getting in the way of gigs - why not cut to the chase? Ah, but some high schools have this thing called "The Battle of the Bands", and if there aren't too many bands in your home town, there's a chance to get a local following even if you're just a half-decent band. That's the hook here as high-schoolers Kevin and Hunter meet in the halls when they team up against the same school bully, and Kevin learns to play the drums so he can back up Hunter on guitar. Together they form the band SkullF•cker and Hunter teaches Kevin about all the best metal bands, from Alice in Chains to Yngwie Malmsteen.
I don't know, this film is four years old, part of me wonders if heavy metal is even a thing any more - didn't it hit some kind of peak in the 1980's with Quiet Riot and Motley Crue, and then again in the 1990's with Metallica and Nine Inch Nails, Slipknot and Korn, hasn't it kind of died out quite a bit since then? Perhaps it's more accurate to say that the genre splintered, because it became thrash metal, death metal, black metal, doom metal and progressive metal, and now any band trying to use the old sound gets pegged as "retro-metal", which should kind of be a contradiction in terms. Meanwhile the old bands are all retiring or fading away, there are probably more active heavy metal bands in Scandinavia now than in the U.S. But whatever, somebody making a film in 2022 about high-school kids playing in a metal band just feels like it's coming along 20 years too late, that's all.
Anyway, let's keep in mind this is supposed to be a comedy. The duo of Hunter and Kevin really needs a bass player, but the kid in school who plays the bass the best is kind of creepy, like not weird but he just wants to knock over all the furniture in the room when he plays. There's another band in the high school, Mollycoddle, but they're more clean-cut except for their drummer who is always stoned. The closest Kevin can find to a bass player is a high-strung exchange student from the U.K. who is a GIRL who plays the cello. He notices her when she yells at the marching band director after he criticized her clarinet playing - well, she was off her meds. But she was only taking marching band to get out of Phys Ed., and I had no idea that was an option - hell, I would have taken marching band instead of orchestra if that had got me out of gym class!
Hunter doesn't want Emily in his band, however, because Kevin starts dating her and he's declared "No Yokos allowed". But since she can play "War Pigs" on the cello, we know this is going to happen, it's just a matter of time. Hunter also clashes with his dad, the plastic surgeon, mainly because he used the family credit card to buy instruments (including a drum kit almost as big as Neal Peart's) at Guitar Center without permission. Hunter's dad has him committed to rehab as punishment, which means he'll be under observation and miss the Battle of the Bands. Kevin heads to the clinic to try and do a prison break, but there's (almost) no need because the lead doctor at the clinic is a former heavy metal band guy himself, but he explains in a roundabout "artist brain" fashion how he went out on tour with band members that he didn't really connect with, and this led to drinking, which led to alcoholism, which led to him working in rehab clinics as part of his sobriety. WOW, that back story had a lot of twists and turns in it, but I guess sometimes, that's life - it's not a straight line.
Kevin gets Hunter (and the drummer from Mollycoddle) out of rehab and gets them back to the school in time for the Battle of the Bands. Hunter makes peace with Emily, Hunter is grateful for having a friend like Kevin, and Hunter even has a casual conversation with Mollycoddle's lead singer, despite that guy not understanding metal AT ALL. Hunter's come a long way, he's experienced some personal growth, but you know, now he's ready to rock. Everything's all set, except the principal won't let them perform under their preferred band name, because it's got a curse word in it. Umm, NITPICK POINT, couldn't she have brought that up before, not when it's five minutes to showtime?
OK, quick band name change, and finally they're ready to rock. What else could POSSIBLY go wrong? It turns out the race is not always won by the fastest runner, sometimes it's won by the participant who fails the most spectacularly. Well, that's one way to go viral, anyway.
Directed by Peter Sollett (director of "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist")
Also starring Jaeden Martell (last seen in "The Bill Murray Stories"), Adrian Greensmith, Isis Hainsworth (last seen in "Emma.", Brett Gelman (last seen in "Strays"), Sufe Bradshaw (last seen in "Gasoline Alley"), Noah Urrea, Analesa Fisher, Michelle Fang, Phelan Davis, Austin Huynh, Teddy van Ee (last seen in "Captain Fantastic"), Aroon Nagappan, Kieran Thomas (last seen in "Pig"), Jonathan Saks, Jalon Howard, Jeff Steitzer, Christopher M. Lopes, Audrey Jones, Rachel Pate (last seen in "Somebody I Used to Know"), Elliot Orr, Dre Slaman, Katie O'Grady (last seen in "The Hunted"), Liam Krug, Paige Johnson Jones, Grayson Palumbo (last seen in "Lou"), Kain Dracula Ashford, Joseph Perez Bertot, David McAndie, James McAndie, Jason Rouse, Christian Pereira, Cherish Hales,
with cameos from Rob Halford, Kirk Hammett (last seen in "Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage"), Scott Ian (last seen in "Lemmy"), Chuck Klosterman, Tom Morello (last seen in "Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple"),
RATING: 6 out of 10 Metallica sheet music books
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