Anvil. El sueño de una banda de rock

I did not expect to enjoy this film as much as I did. 'Anvil' are an ageing Canadian metal band who had 5 minutes of fame before falling short of the big-time. Now they are family men, living humble lives but never forgetting their ultimate dream and passion, so here we follow their last endeavour to make a worldwide success of their band. They are genuinely talented musicians and performers, as testified by the likes of Guns 'n' Roses, Metallica and Anthrax who were influenced by them. However, you don't have to be a fan of metal music to enjoy this heart-warming rockumentary, as you become completely endeared to the central characters – the emotional and sentimental Lips and his best friend and band-mate since they were 14 years old, Robb, the calmer and more enigmatic of the two. The initial impression is that the film could be a spoof, but whilst it is as comic as Spinal Tap, it is in fact a story of the real emotions of real people; making it a thoroughly enjoyable watch.

From the Sundance Film Festival program:

"At 14, Toronto school friends Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner made a pact to rock together forever. Their band, Anvil, went on to become the "demigods of Canadian metal," releasing one of the heaviest albums in metal history, 1982's Metal on Metal. The album influenced a musical generation, including Metallica, Slayer, and Anthrax, that went on to sell millions of records. But Anvil's career took a different path - straight to obscurity.

Director Sacha Gervasi has concocted a wonderful and often hilarious account of Anvil's last-ditch quest for elusive fame and fortune. His ingenious film-making may first lead you to think this a mockumentary, but it isn't. Gervasi joined the legendary heavy-metal band as a roadie for a tour of Canadian hockey arenas, so he has intimate insight into the members' eccentricities. It's fascinating to see the reality of their day-to-day lives as they struggle to make ends meet, take a misguided European tour, and engage in antics on the road - which is not always lined with fans. Gervasi even finds a softer center to this raucous film, introducing us to band members' ever-supportive, but long-suffering, families. At its core, Anvil! The Story of Anvil is a timeless tale of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream, year after year. Anvil rocks - it has no other choice."

I saw this film at a special screening the first day of Sundance 2008 and I was blown away. This film is very watchable, even if you have no interest in metal music. It's fun, funny and emotional in a way that when it starts you are thinking "this can't be for real" then by the end it has drawn you in and made you a part of the band's struggle.

Already, I can tell it is going to be one of this year's best.

This was probably the funniest movie I've seen all year and also one of the most poignant. The director could have really taken the pi&$# out of these guys and made us laugh at them, and I thought that that's what the movie was going to be about, but it wasn't. It's about two guys who never stopped following their dream and if that sounds corny, well, somehow it works.

I did laugh, hilariously at times, (The manager spelling the name of the town they are in in Sweden with her bad English was a classic) but I also really felt for these guys and wanted them to succeed....even as I realized that they were a bit delusional for keeping on the same path for 30+ years, I also had to admire their tenacity and passion.

I highly recommend this human, funny film.

What a great documentary. By turns hilarious, heartbreaking, warm, touching, head- scratching, and full of more edge of your seat suspense than any 10 Hollywood thrillers. It's been called the "real life Spinal Tap," and these metalheads surely do walk the fine line between genius and stupid, but it's got so much more heart and humanity than that. It reminded me more of "American Movie," another great documentary about the unstoppable creative urge and the do-it-yourself-or-die-trying spirit. Lips and Robbo, the two fiftysomething never-say-never-again rockers at the heart of the film, are such fascinating, lovable characters, half heroes, half putzes, partly delusional, yet partly triumphant too. They're good at what they do, they know it and love it and can't stop doing it, even though the music industry passed them over a long, long time ago. They caught all the bad breaks they possibly could, but they didn't let that stop them. As the movie follows them on an agonizing (and yet hilarious) European tour, their attempts to get anyone in the record industry interested in their 13th LP, and an out-of-nowhere gig in Japan, you root for them and fret for them more than any characters in any recent film. That's because, of course, this isn't a film about rock n roll, or about these two guys even -- it really is one of those films that's about all of us, our fears and dreams, our success and failures, our genius moments and our putzy ones. No kidding, not just one of the best docs I've seen in recent years, but one of the mot touching and affecting movies, period.

Anvil is a story not everyone can relate to, it takes balls to do what Anvil has done over this last 30 years, and that is never to give up.

When I first saw the trailer in the apple site I was really intrigued about the fact that Lars Ulrich, Scott Ian, Lemmy, Slash and all these guys that I consider my heroes were talking so highly about Anvil.

Truth be told, being born in 1983 I never heard of them until now and was very moved by their perseverance and loyalty to their cause which is the music.

Being an independent rock musician in a foreign country, this movie didn't give me anything more than hope and a well placed push to have faith in what I am doing.

The documentary is one of the best I've seen in my life and it really talked to me.

If you have a dream, go see, buy or rent "Anvil! The story of anvil" it will show you that nothing is impossible when you put your heart in it.

Even when it looks like everything is against you.

Two thumbs up, five stars, 4 thumbs up, 10 stars No matter the scale, this documentary gets the highest.

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