Twistin 5th Dec 2015
| | Rated 7/10I used to read a lot of British gaming magazines back in the 90's because they were very funny. Amiga Power was my favorite because they were particularly cruel whenever a bad game landed in their office. From the first issue, there was a feature called Oh Dear, which spotlighted the worst of the worst, usually in explicit detail. And through the entire 24 minutes of Heavy Metal Jr., those were the two words that bounced around in my brain.
I thought I'd seen it all, but obviously there is a new low that suggests to me that perhaps eugenics is not such a bad idea after all.
What we have here is a musical documentary about a new band comprised of kids age 10-13 who play heavy metal music. And they are simply terrible. They look bad, they play bad, and they're, if I may be frank, illiterate. Mind you, they can spell better than the lead singer's mother, who purchases a piece of cloth for the band featuring their name repeated several times so that they can cut them out and sew them onto their denim jackets. She seems genuinely surprised when her 10-year old son informs her that the word is spelled Hatred and not Hatrid. The band settle on the misspelled name, rather than waste a perfectly good fabric, presumably. And such a nice name, too.
While recording their songs to sell on CD-R at their upcoming first concert, that same mother expresses concern over the lyrics to their original song, "Two Gods Don't Make a Right", but it's rationed that it's actually a religious song since two gods indeed don't make a right. No explanation is given for their newest song, "Satan Rocks", which we are lucky enough to get the opportunity to watch the band compose. Marilyn Manson, the band's hero, would be so proud.
Heavy Metal Jr. plays and looks like a mockumentary because director Chris Waitt obviously sensed how ridiculous all of this was, but none of the participants seem to have a clue how absurdly pitiful they are. Even the manager for the band (father of the drummer) is not spared as he tries to explain to the boys how to "rock out", using the opportunity to showcase his vocal skills while the cameras were rolling. And he can sing, sounding like a cross between Geoff Tate and Bruce Dickinson. Sadly, none of that talent was inherited by his offspring, nor his mates.
I laughed my way through most of this film, but in reality, it's very sad. It's not because kids can't rock, because they can and do under better circumstances. These are simply miserable people with nothing to offer, but who feel the need to say something anyway. We laugh at them, not with them. The product of the modern day equivalent of the "me generation", which is better relegated to YouTube, but even then, why? If you suck, why advertise it?
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