It Might Get Loud (2009)
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Reviews Counted: 109
Fresh: 87 | Rotten: 22
An affectionate tribute to rock's most distinctive instrument, It Might Get Loud is insightful and musically satisfying.
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 8
An affectionate tribute to rock's most distinctive instrument, It Might Get Loud is insightful and musically satisfying.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 17,742
My Rating
Movie Info
Academy Award-winning An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim focuses his probing lens on a subject that's decidedly less urgent but no less fascinating with this look at the electric guitar featuring Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's the Edge, and the White Stripes' Jack White. Growing up, all three guitarists realized their rebellion through music: Page was attempting to subvert the sugary-sweet pop music of the 1960s, the Edge was hell-bent on making the guitar solos of the 1970s a
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All Critics (109) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (87) | Rotten (22) | DVD (2)
The film might have benefited from a trim and a more linear approach, but mostly it fulfils its role as an illuminating homage to both the protagonists involved and, above all, the guitar as popular music's most timeless icon.
Top CriticGuitar heroes, real or imaginary, will think they've died and gone to heaven.
The trouble is, once you get past the historical information and chummy interviews, you have to put up with the inevitable risk of any ad-hoc jam session: It Might Get Boring.
Davis Guggenheim's contrived documentary is a largely unrewarding essay on the mystique of the ubiquitous electric guitar...
Rock fans and Guitar Heroes in the making will get a charge out of visiting where the happy accidents that put guitars into each man's hand happened. And the playing isn't bad, either. Loud. But good.
For guitar geeks, the sight of Page, Edge and White together in one room will be enough. Others, however, can't help but wish it might have gotten a little louder.
What a great structural concept for a music documentary!
Turn up the volume.
there are some lovely moments in the film simply due to the high profile reputations of the three musicians
Guggenheim's depictions of his subjects' artistic development will strike universal chords in anyone who finds meaning in creativity.
Watching this film, we are utterly gripped as we hear the stories of three rock guitar legends and then see them interacting with each other. Yet while there's never a dull moment, the film still feels a bit random.
The mood's too good-spirited, and in that there are great pleasures - not least the sound-of-mind thinking of three rockers putting paid to the tired cliché of burbling rock gods trapped in their own shadows.
For guitar freaks and fans of these guys, the film gives you a unique chance to hang out with some real guitar heroes.
A bizarre follow-up to the fifth biggest cinema documentary of all time, and one that's as testing on the patience as a 10-minute guitar solo with extra tremolo.
It's artfully assembled in an unflashy manner.
It's never less than a compelling watch as the trio of turbo-charged troubadours swap anecdotes.
Guggenheim's attempts to inject some drama hit a bum note while the climactic summit between the three axe gods is let down by a lack of chemistry, resulting in more of a cheerful jam than a headline act.
Fellow players and aspiring rock gods will thrill at the scenes of the trio jamming together, but Guggenheim's film never takes an insular "muso" view and has plenty to offer the lay person.
If you're a fan of any of their bands, rock music or the electric guitar, you'll find a lot to love here.
Even for me, a rock illiterate, this is interesting.
The film gets up close and personal, proving that each is a musician first and a rock 'n' roll star afterwards.
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I'll go ahead and admit though that my rating is inflated by an extra half-star, if only for the fact that the musicians here (especially 2 out of the 3) have had a major impact on me personally.
What we get is a celebration of the electric guitar by just three players, all of whom, have proven seminal practitioners from their individual generations. I understand that it would be hard to choose three people for this sort of thing, but I'm mostly okay with the selections of Jack White, The Edge, and Jimmy Page. I think it would have been cool had they included someone such as Tom Morello, though, as his story and impact are just as important.
Maybe they should have done what they did with The Other F Word, and have the primary focus be on one person, but with heavy amounts of input from several others.
Instead we get a look at how the backgrounds, influences, and experiences of each man affect their crafts and creative processes, all of which culminate in a meeting of the three where they jam and chill with one another. Oddly enough, it's the meeting of the three where the film is at its weakest. None feel all that ease with one another, things are pretty awkward, and there's a missed opportunity to really ask some probing and revealing questions. At times it is neat, but ultimately its very underwhelming.
The individual moments with each of them are all pretty good though, and I loved the various techniques used to bring their stories to life, especially the animated stuff.
All in all, this is passable, but unfortunately not what it should have been.