Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny

Directed by Liam Lynch

Jack Black, please don’t ever become a Serious Actor. Nix all projects with chemotherapy ward, concentration camps, political rallies, subtitles and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Yes, your marvelously expressive putim and cherubic, oddly sexy physicality could probably embody, with feeling, the soul of a gay, heroin-addicted sculptor who witnesses the Velvet Revolution in Prague. But let Javier Bardem or Jeffrey Wright fill the uncomfy seats at the Angelika, Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell to get all sappy and Liev Schreiber and Peter Sarsgaard to fight over an Oscar. None of these gifted thespians could do what you do: power slides! Boner-induced pushups and alarm-deactivations! Singing (in power and diction) worthy of Meatloaf! Heel-clicks of unfettered joy! The sniffly, choky whimpers of a 10 year-old! Despite your very earnest obsession with the sounds and stances of ’70-’80s hard rock and heavy metal, you’re an entertainer who evokes far earlier eras as well—like vaudeville or medieval theater. With your uninhibited sense of grandeur and sweet, barely-ironic silliness, Jack Black, you’re kind of timeless. And, to borrow overused parlance: You rock!

Perhaps none of the above surprises those already smitten with Black’s incandescent, uber-impish turns in School of Rock, Shallow Hal or High Fidelity. Yet, Black or no Black, expectations felt lower for Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. A pseudo-biopic of the quasi-serious, two-man metal band, that includes Black and Kyle Gass, sounded as doomed-to-snooze as a feature-length “SNL”-inspired movie. Instead, it’s a brisk, tightly paced, laugh-out-loud fairytale/buddy pic with rock-operatic interludes and an outsized sense of absurdity that’s often raunchy and scatological but almost never mean-spirited.

Tweaking metal’s fantastical, occult fixations, the romp mythologizes the origins of Tenacious D: beginning with cussing lil’ JB (Troy Gentile as a jaw-dropping mini Black) being banished by his Bible-thumping father (Meatloaf); followed by his Jedi-like tutelage at Venice Beach under KG; the discovery of the fated pair’s corresponding ass birthmarks, “Tenac” and “Icious D”; a crucial power shift between student and teacher; a mettle-testing battle-of-the-bands challenge; and, finally, a mythic quest to Sacramento’s Rock ’n’ Roll Museum for a grail-like guitar pick forged during a satanic struggle in the Middle Ages.

Their swift, rarely dragging journey to creative and emotional fulfillment, to moaning groupies and spontaneously combusting fans, is punctuated by an inspired, motley crew (but no Mötley Crüe) of cameos: Black Sabbath’s Dio as himself; Dave Grohl as an 8-foot, sodomizing, guitar-slinging Satan; Meatloaf as the rock-hating father; Tim Robbins as a knife-wielding, one-legged rock pirate; and executive producer Ben Stiller as a frizzy-haired music store manager hiding an ancient secret. If the potty-mouthed, Tommy-like rock operatic sequences aren’t odd enough, there’s also a dream-hallucination sequence in which JB skips, swims and flies through a psychedelic forest with Sasquatch as he morphs into a mini-Sasquatch himself and is beaten on a park bench by a Cockney-speaking quartet of Clockwork Orange thugs.

Black makes all this surreal stupidity palatable, even authentic, and will draw crowds unfamiliar with Tenacious D. But there’s also something disarming about the sadly quiet, bald, heavier-set KG, a buckster who still takes rent checks from Mom; he’s Patrick Starfish to Black’s SpongeBob. As with The Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Old School, the fratboy raucousness and fart jokes here belie a sweet, honest, sometimes complex, portrait of male friendship and masculine self-acceptance. And it’s the best example yet of what worlds bubble beneath Black’s court jester skin. But don’t tell that to Lars von Trier or Nicole Kidman. We need him more than they do.