_Anvil! The Story of Anvil_: The _Heeb_ Review

By Nadine Levyfield

During hair metal’s heyday, Canadian band Anvil played for packed crowds all over the world. Today, Anvil frontman Lips, aka, Steve Kudlow, drives a delivery van for Choice Children’s Catering along the snowy streets of Toronto.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil was directed by Sacha Gervasi, who wrote the script for Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film,The Terminal. That film’s sentimentality carries over into this documentary (hitting theaters Friday), which focuses on Lips and Anvil co-founder Robb Reiner as they struggle to keep the band going – despite being middle aged and commercially unsuccessful.

Though their career fizzled out when other metal bands’ CDs were selling like hotcakes, the two core members of Anvil made a pact to keep the band together. The film chronicles Anvil’s biggest tour in 20 years, organized by a fan named Tiziana. Footage of the tour is blended with interviews with Lips and Robb’s families, clips of diehard Anvil fans "Cut Loose" and "Mad Dog" and statements from key members of the metal community (Slash, Tom Araya Scott Ian), praising Anvil’s influence on modern metal.

The bond between Lips and Rob along with their “no time like the present” mentality propels the band on a haphazard European tour, which is plagued from the start. Some moments seem straight out of Spinal Tap, like when a club owner in Prague tries to pay the band in goulash because their set started late. Later, Lips and Robb duke it out in the picturesque Kent studio of legendary metal producer Chris Tsangarides, who intervenes with a stern “Oy Vey!” It’s a definite low point to see two middle aged men dressed in full-scale metal attire blubbering over the past.

For all the missed trains and unpaid gigs, the band truly does rock out at their last show – the Monsters of Transylvania Metal Fest in Romania – albeit in front of a crowd of 174 people when the venue seats 10,000. Lips tries desperately to get the money together for their album, resorting to working for diehard fan Cut Loose’s telemarketing firm before realizing he just can’t do it any longer. Luckily, his sister lends the band some money.

The film comes full circle when the band performs in front of a packed stadium in Tokyo, where they performed twenty or so years ago. In the end, you can’t help rooting for Anvil–but then again, I’m a sucker for a codpiece and spandex.

What do you think?