| USA/CANADA, 2008, 80 mins Directed by SACHA GERVASI Florida Premiere |
Toronto teenagers Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, released 1982's genre-classic Metal on Metal, influencing a generation of thrash metal pioneers including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, all of whom went on to sell millions of records. Anvil's career took a different path--straight to obscurity. Nearly 25 years and a dozen albums later, Lips and Reiner are in their 50s. They work dead-end jobs, struggling to keep the band alive amid impatient families, crippling mortgages, and creeping old age. Luckily, "quit" is not part of their vocabulary, so onward they rock! Uncomfortable and hilarious, ANVIL! captures the band gearing up for their 13th album, This Is Thirteen. It doesn't go well. A warm-up European tour fails spectacularly--Anvil misses trains, rarely plays in front of more than a dozen people, and makes no money from the gigs (one club owner tries to pay them in goulash). The completed album is rejected by labels large and small, driving Lips into telemarketing. Throughout this string of disasters, director Sacha Gervasi does more than position Anvil as a real life SPINAL TAP. Lips and Reiner are revealed as loyal, loving, and unfailingly dedicated to their friendship as well as their band. Like the wannabe filmmakers of American Movie, this pair believes the only life worth living is one where you stay true to youthful ambitions . . . year after year after year after year after year . . . As heart-warming as it is absurd, ANVIL! is simply one of the best rock movies ever made. Don't miss it.
