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Reviews Counted:61
Fresh:51
Rotten:10
Average Rating:7.1/10
Consensus: It's up for debate how serious or ironic its subjects are, but Air Guitar Nation is nonetheless a funny and exciting documentary with a killer soundtrack.
Runtime: 81 mins
Genre: Musical & Performing Arts
Theatrical Release:Mar 23, 2007 Limited
Synopsis: A battle of naked ambition played out on the national and, ultimately, world stage, AIR GUITAR NATION chronicles the birth of the U.S. Air Guitar Championships as legions of aspiring rock stars... [More]
Starring: David S. Jung, Dan Crane, Gordon Hintz, Zac Munro
Director: Alexandra Lipsitz
The Finns take the whole thing pretty seriously, noting that if you hold an air guitar, it's impossible to simultaneously hold a gun or rifle. (I'm sure some hombre in a Peckinpah movie would be able to pull it off.)
It's one of the charms of Air Guitar Nation that much of it plays like a mockumentary in which you're not quite sure who's pulling your leg. But it's real, even if the guitars are not.
Director Alexandra Lipsitz doesn't do much more than chronicle the noise, but it's intermittently fun stuff.
It's hard not to grin and admit that, yes, this is almost an art form.
Top CriticThe documentary is very well paced, beginning with a montage of just what one would presume to be the typical air guitar of a drunken concert goer and progressing into a film chronicling something like showmanship.
Air Guitar Nation does a fine job of bottling prelapsarian exuberance.
Alexandra Lipsitz believes that air-guitar competitions are worth a whole feature-length movie. She's wrong, of course. But the fun lasts longer than you might think.
Top CriticFascinating? Absolutely.
As dumb as the idea of grown men dressing up and pretending to play guitar may be, there's no arguing that some of these grown men do so with a truly awesome degree of energy and flair.
Top CriticIrresistible.
It's no small feat to film a documentary like this with the right balance of reverence for the craft of air guitar and good, old-fashioned shooting at an easy target, but Lipsitz pulls it off.
Although Air Guitar Nation is a documentary, Lipsitz stumbled across a couple of compelling characters in Jung and Crane, who are anything but n’air-do-wells.
There are enough endearing characters and charming trash talk to keep what is essentially a one-note joke running toward the spastic crescendo with alacrity.
The movie's wild performances and droll humor are tough to resist.
Air Guitar Nation is a wonderfully wild ride of a documentary, and the greatest trick of the picture is found in how it makes the audience succumb to the power of the sport.
Air Guitar Nation plays less like a feature-length documentary than it does a poorly thrown together behind-the-scenes supplement to the real thing.
It's never clear from one moment to the next what is a joke and what is deadly earnest, until the two concepts finally merge into a sort of Buddhist singularity.
Top CriticAlexandra Lipsitz's often hilarious documentary (with almost everyone in on the joke) won the audience award at SXSW and is spawning a cult following that could snowball in release.
Nary a dull lick in the entire 80 minutes.
Top Criticthe film will be remembered for the overall sense of camaraderie overcoming competition, fraternity trumping rivalry, and the discovery of graciousness in victory and defeat
August 28, 2007:
RT on DVD: Blades of Glory, Air Guitar Nation, and Heroes: Season 1 Arrive!
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April 26, 2007:
Trailer & Poster review 
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March 22, 2007:
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This week at the movies we've got turtle power ("TMNT"), whimsy ("The Last Mimzy," starring Timothy Hutton), conspiracies ("Shooter," starring Mark... More...
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