Movie of the year

When I first saw the trailer for Anvil! The Story of Anvil, I thought it was a put-on — a Spinal Tap reheat. Indeed, it features a drummer called Robb Reiner, a volume dial that really does go to eleven, and a hilarious disquisition on the origins of a song called Thumb-Hang ("its from the Spanish Inquisition"). But Anvil are real alright and the film is a joy — funny and touching and rousing, in large part because of the lead singer Lips, a wide-eyed, big-hearted overflowing spillage of a man who exhorts his band through thick and thin with speeches that veer between indefatigable optimism and outright delusion. After everything on their tour goes wrong, he points out, “at least there was a tour for it to go wrong on.” Look on the bright side, he says, as he drives back to his job at a children's catering company in frozen Ontario. "It could never be worse than it already is." By the end of the movie I was tapping my foot to their awful, earsplitting songs, like the proudest of mothers, and I left the theatre with tears streaking my face. Just glorious.