#234: Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny
Release Date: November 22nd, 2006
Format: DVD
Written by: Jack Black, Kyle Gass, and Liam Lynch
Directed by: Liam Lynch
3.5 Stars
Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny is everything you could want from a stoner comedy. It’s a shaggy dog tale of two lazy schlubs living in Hollywood who hear of a mythical guitar pick that’s, in fact, the broken tooth of Satan himself. It’s with this pick that musicians have been writing the greatest rock and blues songs of the past 100 plus years.
Where is the pick now? Well, Jack and Kyle, who together form the titular rock duo Tenacious D, are going to have to pull off a high-wire heist at the Rock & Roll History Museum in Sacramento to retrieve it, but once they have it, they have no doubt it’s the key to making all of their rock ‘n roll dreams come true.
Or at least maybe they can win the open mic contest at the bar down the street from their ratty apartment.
That’s more or less the plot of this silly movie that really isn’t about plot. What it’s about is friendship, dreams, and getting really high and having fun.
I love the scenes with Satan and Sasquatch, the former of which has a genuinely amazing rock showdown with The D (that’s Dave Grohl in the devil costume), and the latter of which is in a seen that usually has me teary-eyed with laughter, when Jack hallucinates that he’s Sasquatch’s son as they float down the lazy Strawberry River.
I’m not sure if I’m really doing this movie any justice by writing about it.
Made at the height of Jack Black’s box office power, post-School of Rock and Peter Jackson’s King Kong, he blew whatever goodwill he had accrued from the studios to make this dumb comedy with his real life friend and bandmate Kyle, based roughly on their HBO show from ten years prior (great show, by the way).
Unfortunately for Jack, the stoners didn’t really show up to the theaters and the movie lost a bunch of money. Those stoners, they’re an unreliable sort. But over the years, the film has rightfully settled into the cult classic status it was destined for.
