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entertaining u newspaper: your weekly guide to entertainment
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Seen, Heard, Noted & Quoted
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by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
B Rating R (for good reason) 93 min
The Pick of Destiny is a guitar pick that was carved from the tooth of the devil, and whoever wields its power can rock with a prowess that is beyond their natural ability. This pick is what JB (Jack Black) and KG (Kyle Gass) need to be sure they win the battle of the bands and can continue to live in Los Angeles rather than move back home with their parents.
Tenacious D is the real Jack Black. If you think of King Kong, Nacho Libre, School of Rock, and the host of the Nickelodeon Kid’s Choice Awards when you think of Jack Black, be careful, that isn’t the real Jack Black, that’s the family-friendly Jack Black. The real Jack Black is a foul-mouthed pot smoker with a very dirty mind. Well, I don’t know the real Jack Black, but Tenacious D is what ushered Black into the pop culture lexicon.
I first saw him in various sketches on David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s Mr. Show and shortly after first noticing the over-weight, wild-eyed melodramatist, he and Kyle Gass started appearing in their own show on HBO called Tenacious D. Tenacious D is a real band. Like the Blues Brothers, Jack Black and Kyle Gass actually tour and perform. They sold out the Florida Theatre not too many years back when they came to Jacksonville.
In The Pick of Destiny, Jack Black finally brings the back-story of Tenacious D to the big screen. The movie opens to a Midwestern family eating their dinner around a table with an empty seat. The family patriarch, played by Meat Loaf, is angrily chewing his food with a cross on the wall behind him, and his wife looks over at him nervously. Jack Black sings the first words of the film when he power slides into the room as a twelve year old boy playing guitar with power strums and vulgar language. This scene quickly turns into a rock opera duet between Meat Loaf as the strict domineering father and Jack Black as the rock and roll rebel. When his father rips all of his metal posters off of the wall of his bedroom and slams the door, JB sings to the Dio poster still intact on the backside of the door and the rock opera continues as Dio (played by himself) comes to life and sends him to Hollywood after his destiny.
There he finds street musician, Kyle Gass, looking like we have never seen him before, with long blonde hair. He is playing an acoustic guitar for chump change and JB is mystified by his “genius” even growing enraged with the people that pass his mediocre tunes without listening.
“Don’t you know genius when you hear it?”
KG tries to get JB to stop scaring off his listeners, but JB ends up singing to KG’s guitar and the magic of Tenacious D is born (and acknowledged only by the pizza delivery guy from Wake N Bake Pizza). Actually KG still tells JB to piss off and throws a guitar pick at him. Later KG cowers behind a trashcan when he sees some guys dressed up as droogs from Clockwork Orange beating JB in the street, and JB fighting to hold onto the pick of his hero. Finally the droogs leave and KG acts as though he ran the thugs off. Thus begins the training.
Thinking that KG knows Dio personally and is a successful musician in California, JB stays with him and endures “training” in order to be given the opportunity to audition for the Kyle Gass Project. During this training he learns to power slide, perform in front of violent hecklers, and score bags of marijuana. Then JB realizes that “Love you pumpkin” isn’t one of KGs hit songs and those aren’t royalty checks he receives in the mail every month, but checks from his mother that keep KGs rent paid. He also finds out that KG is bald. Thus the two become equals and agree on the name Tenacious D because of their peculiar birthmarks, which spell “Tenacious D” when they push their fat asses together.
A local open mic night is their only chance to get the scratch together to not have to move back in with their parents in Middle America. Failing to muster the inspiration they need to write the best song in rock history, they learn about this pick and make it their mission to acquire it so that they can join the ranks of rock legends.
Featuring cameos by Tim Robbins, John C. Reilly (as the sasquatch), Ben Stiller, and Nirvana’s David Grohl (also Tenacious D’s drummer) as the devil himself, this epic journey to break into the Rock History Museum to acquire their pick and ultimately battle the devil in a rock off is hysterical beyond description.
Although many critics are calling the film long and half-witted, it is actually clever in its sophomoric approach to the story, and crass enough to surprise laughter out of you. It also doesn’t get bogged down in storyline, as the comedies critics seem to enjoy do, but rather stays funny throughout the film. If you laugh at the humor of South Park, you will laugh at Tenacious D, but if you aren’t interested in penis jokes and drug use, this film may not be for you.
“I really wish that we had secret headquarters where there was a batcave in the Hollywood Hills Mountain, like inside the Hollywood sign, where we would drive in and talk about domination of world comedy. We’d have superpowers and drive out in our super-comedy mobiles. But it doesn’t exist.”--Jack Black from a Sports Illustrated interview
In mid 2004 USA Today coined the term “Frat Pack” to refer to various comedic actors who have frequently appeared together in movies since the ‘90’s. The group is comprised of Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson. All of the Frat Pack members have never appeared in a single movie together, but any movie featuring two of the members is considered to be an official Frat Pack movie. The Frat Pack Website (www.the-frat-pack.com) is chock full of comedic pod casts and movie suggestions.
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