Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)

I know it’s cliche to compare Anvil to Spinal Tap but the first time I saw this I legit thought it was a melancholic remake of Spinal Tap because my brain couldn’t process the fact that the drummer’s name was “Robb Reiner.” 

Nearly 20 years later, with a couple of years in the music industry behind me, it’s actually pretty tragic seeing these dudes get run through Spinal Tap without the benefit of having made it. Like, man, that whole European tour is such a raw deal, even the festival where they’re basically the losers at a high school reunion. 30 years into their career and the best that entertainment lawyer can say Anvil deserves is 1000 cap rooms? Like, yes, the human spirit is unbreakable, yes, up the eternal soldiers of rock and roll, but this is one long, dark night of the human soul, and it sometimes feels like the movie delights in twisting the knife, like showing the attendance figures for some of these shows. It’s like they made the whole movie out of that part of Some Kind of Monster where Lars Ulrich’s dad suggests that the best thing his son could do with St. Anger would be to delete it.