Some
relevant scientific researches have found a co-relation between the
strength of some country’s heavy metal scene, its general
development and the overall happiness of its people. We can hardly
imagine heavy metal as the music of happy people (or the upper
classes for that matter), but apparently, if it is possible and
socially acceptable for its young adults from blue collar background
to channel the negative emotions like fear, angst and the appetite
for (self-)destruction through some aggressive guitar-shredding, it
means that some country is a happy member of the first world. If we
take the Anglo-Saxon countries, Germany and Scandinavia as an
example, we can see that the theory stands.
Also,
it is worth noting that, contrary to the popular tropes and residuals
of moral panic from the past century, metalheads are not necessarily
dumb, aggressive kids and/or fanatical animal-sacrificing
blood-thirsty Devil-worshippers, but simply people who prefer some
kind of music over the others and spot a certain look. Movie-wise,
however, the tropes still works, especially in comedies for the fun
effect. And when treated in a smart way, which is the case with Jusso
Laatio and Jukka Vindgren’s feature debut Heavy Trip,
they can generate a lot of laughs without feeling condescending.
It
is the story of a (fictional) extreme metal band called Impaled
Rectum from a village in the north of Finland and its struggle to
success imagined as a performance on a famous Norwegian festival.
Before that, they kept rehearsing by playing covers in the basement
of the fast guitarist Lotvonen’s (Samuli Jaskio) family
business – the reindeer slaughterhouse. The band consists also of
the daredevil drummer Jynkky (Antti Heikkinen), the walking
metal encyclopedia bassist Pasi (Max Ovaska) who works as a
librarian in his daily life and the gentle singer Turo (Johannes
Holopainen of Unknown Soldier fame) who has to take the
verbal abuse from almost everyone in the village, like the police
chief and the local punks, while having a literally shitty job as an
orderly in a mental institution. Needless to say, when holding a
microphone, he turns into a growling beast. He is the protagonist and
our perspective in the story and is also involved in a love triangle
sub-plot with his ex-classmate, the beautiful florist Miia (Minka
Kuustonen) and his nemesis, a local pop-singer buffoon Jouni
Tulkku (Ville Tiihonen).
The
description promises a road movie in the likes of The Blues
Brothers, only more metal in sound and attitude, but Laatio and
Vindgren, together with their co-writers Aleksi Puranen and
Jari Olvi Rantala, take some sweet time to get the band on the
road trip, while scoring laughs on the home field, putting the
characters in some potentially dangerous situations with the rest of
the townsfolk. Those set pieces are based on stereotypes and might
prove to be even a bit offensive to both sides in the “conflict”
(stupid metalheads doing dangerous stuff, sleazy rednecks that change
their attitudes towards them when they have a shot to become famous),
but here are done with a special warmth in hearts and minds of the
writers, even though they are basically milking for laughs at
predictable places.
Heavy
Trip has some other classics of rock cinema in its DNA, like the
early 90’s comedies Airheads and Wayne’s World, but
the difference is Laatio and Vindgred are very aware of those films
and that they are just playing with them (there is no way that every
time the band plays, the look of the film changes towards some music
video aesthetics), so they are not trying too hard to look cool while
using the familiar tropes to make us laugh while making their
characters silly in a likeable way. Not every joke is spot on, but
most of them are and we can relate to the characters even though most
of them are just rough sketches. The visual identity of the film is
also smart, using the natural surroundings to highlight Turo’s
loneliness and offering a glimpse into the boring life in Finnish
countryside.
Once
the road trip starts more than halfway into the film, more
outlandish, over the top stuff is about to turn up, and Heavy Trip
becomes one really enjoyable fare, no matter if the audience is full
of metalheads or not. It is pure fun, nothing more, nothing less.
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