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Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny

Have you ever stopped in at a relative’s house and they just start feeding you? Normally you know better than to accept for mainly etiquette reasons, but there just happens to be That One Time where the visit is unplanned and you’re coincidentally starving to the point of delirium. Sit down and have something to eat, they tell you. You’re too famished to decline the offer and next thing you know you’re eating a three-day-old vegetable surprise that’s less surprising than finding a meth lab in a trailer park and you’re hearing about your second cousin Jay and his exploits in West Virginia. But what your host/relative fails to realize is that you’re not actually enjoying the meal.

Because you don’t have the balls or lack of etiquette to seem unappreciative you just humor them because feeding you is the highlight of their day and no matter how much of a prick you are, you just can’t bring yourself to take that away from them. And every time you see them after that one instance, you’re sent home with the vegetable surprise.

But the problem this time around is that Tenacious D fed you. When you saw them in their shorter, digestible offerings on HBO back in the day, it was just enough to keep you from starving and not enough to give you The Itis. It was funny, it was raw and in the small doses it offered, it never wore out its welcome. What happened in the many years since those tasty little treats is that Jack Black became a big star, which consequently changed the recipe and the next time they made it with that crappy and over-celebrated album they put out a few years ago you got the shits and you couldn’t get the greasy smell off you or get the taste out of your mouth to save your life.

And now comes the buffet! A serving table as long as the eye can see that serves up rock clichés, stoner jokes, music video parodies and celebrity cameos dried out by heat lamps and served with flat pop. And all this comes to you courtesy of Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny, the story of how Jack Black and Kyle Gass formed the self-proclaimed Greatest Band on Earth. In addition to wanting to be This is Spinal Tap so incredibly bad, The Pick of Destiny recaptures none of the freshness or weirdness that made the original HBO skits so great. Another challenge that Tenacious D faces is trying to satisfy their old fans while bringing some new buyers onto the used car lot—all while there are no motors under the hoods.

The only way I can think of to properly explain this is by drawing a parallel with the Fucillo car dealership commercials. Jack Black is the obnoxious Billy Fucillo who managed not to annoy anyone for the first two minutes that anyone knew he existed. Then the word huuuuuuuuuuuuge left his lips and it was all over. Kyle Gass is the other guy they stick in front of the camera when they know the Fucillo tolerance level hasn’t shot back up yet with the general public. I know a lot of people who change the channel the second they see one of these douchebags on the screen because they make tri-state killing sprees happen. But some people are stupid and actively seek out crap because they think they’re being fun or silly by doing so. But I don’t know anyone who can take more than 30 seconds of a Fucillo commercial. And the barrage that Fucillo has been dealing onto the general population is the only thing that got me through The Pick of Destiny.

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