Heavier Trip (2024)
Harder! Faster! Louder!
Now I know what you're thinking. He slipped back into his habits of just making us have to watch a whole bunch of horror movies, isn't he? Good news for you? No, kind of. At least not this week. See, although there was an option of catching up on a horror movie that's in the backlog this week, there was also about seven other movies that are also in the backlog that I can now get to without having to pay extra so I did what I usually do and put them to the committee, and the committee said we want to do this one. And by the committee saying we want to do this one, I actually mean we couldn't decide so we had to just random spinner it and the spinner decided for us. But it's OK 'cause it looked good. Do you like metal music? Do you like humor? Do you like humorous references to rock and metal music? Oh man, you're about to go for one heck of a Heavier Trip.
I'm gonna be upfront with you here in our normal plot related section of the review. It's not exactly anything new in the plot department. You will see things coming before they happen. The good news is, despite the fact that it's kind of something you've seen before when it comes to band movies, it's still very much fun about it. The band in focus is actually a metal band. With a mile long subgenre listing of specified black metal that they are. Who happens to be in prison for causing a bit of a situation between Norway and Finland apparently. They are offered an offer by a musical representative to go to a rather big show for metalheads, but of course they're in prison. Kind of makes it hard. When one of the band's dads happens to have a little bit of a medical emergency, though, suddenly the money offer that came with doing that performance becomes a lot more important, and they decide to do the only reasonable thing. Break out of jail and go to the concert. From there, shenanigans ensue with a crazy jail guard trying to track them down and all sorts of references, and goofiness, and things that you will really probably enjoy more if you are into metal and rock and Hard Rock and music stuff in the 1st place but I feel like will still be fun either way.
The actors here do a pretty good job. Yes, I can't really speak to how well the line deliveries are at all times because I don't always speak the language even though there is a good chunk of it that is in English, but I feel like they all do a good job in what they're aiming for regardless. Our corpse painted character really just absolutely nails that part and you got to give them props for it. Some people might not get it as much, some people might just decide it's not that great of an acting job and in all honesty, maybe it's not. He could be like that in real life, I don't know. Point is, as far as the character goes on screen, super believable. Most of the actors in this are actually doing a quite good job at nailing what they're supposed to be as far as the movie is concerned, although I guess maybe to some extent mileage will vary. I don't necessarily think it's because of the acting job itself. More so, just some people might not appreciate the cornballiness, goofiness of some of the stuff. It's a bit like watching an episode of Metalocalypse, except for perhaps much less violent. And I know for sure that not everybody really enjoyed that show either.
The characters are probably a much more mixed bag in theory than the actual actors are. They have their little motivations or I guess character traits, but for the most part the arc is reserved for the singer. Not exactly something new, especially for the whole band kind of movie like the arc of this entire movie does but, you know, it's still worth pointing out I suppose. The movie itself does have a bit of a character to it in its own regard when it comes to things like commentary and references I feel, but for the most part I wouldn't necessarily call this movie character driven in so much as the characters play the roles they need to without being too crazy in depth. There's a little background to some of them, and their actions all have logical reasons based around the character, it just doesn't go out of its way to really force home this super crazy level of interpersonal drama and seeping depth that you can pull at to try to discover the crazy philosophical meanings of humanity. That being said, I wasn't expecting any of that going into this movie. I was expecting jokes, metal references, and a good time and I was given those so I can forgive it for not having super crazy characters. And by super crazy, I'm referring to the depth of the characters, not how crazy the characters are 'cause it has some super crazy characters, if you know what I'm saying.
Prison metal.
The costume department gets to have some fun here. Yes, it's the modern day style movie with the modern day clothes, but that whole angle of it being the metal scene and the different branches of metal and even actually having a metal band or two in it really gives you a lot to play with. Again, some of the stuff here is gonna make more sense if you are already into the metal scene to some extent. Things like corpse paint or the costumes that are associated with crazy black metal outfits or just Baby Metal in general when they show up. They do show up a few times. It adds a little bit of flavor to something that would otherwise just kind of fit into that everyday attire kind of costume department shenanigans that just blends in and doesn't make you think about it. It's nice. Effects wise, we do actually have some of that in here too, although it's largely nothing too over the top, but we do have some fires of varying levels of believability and impressiveness. And we also have. One rather. Violent spot at the very end. But it's also kind of a weird situation where I guess I could call it gory, but it doesn't necessarily look like it's something zombie movie level of gore and it's kind of actually played more for a cartoony laugh. So I don't know, there is some violence in the movie is what I guess I'm saying.
The music is here. Of course it's a music movie. I mean, it's not a musical, but it's a music based movie, so it's going to have music. Whether you like that music or not is going to depend on if you like the genre. In this case, it's metal. I love metal. Yes, I have a love it or hate it situational relationship when it comes to some of the vocals in metal because sometimes I prefer clean vocals and sometimes I enjoy hearing somebody scream but there's a nice range of things in here, so musical wise, my ears are happy. They do play with it in some parts as well, as far as like a commentary situation on the musical industry and a lot of it isn't necessarily going to be jumping out at you as a specific band’s tracks necessarily being repurposed for everything - but you can kind of hear some semblances in there, and I mean Baby Metal is just flat out in the movie so their music is also flat out just in the movie. This could also tie into more of the commentary side of things that you could get to, but I've gone to one of their concerts. I think they're fun. It's a good song. I ain't complaining about it. But it also does have that much heavier classic kind of black metal and things like that - some of the melodical stuff, some of the tones and things, it has fun with it. Audio delivery is great, so you don't have to worry about that. Although there is also one character who's got such a deep voice that if he's not sucking on helium, they make it purposefully kind of hard to distinguish what he's saying, which is also kind of a play and Easter egg onto metal in general. There's a lot of that here.
Now, by this point you've heard me point out that there's a lot of stuff commentary wise that you could dig into if you're that kind of person. We also should know by this point that I'm not really the person that does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to doing things like analyzing what the movie could possibly be meaning and talking about society as a whole when I'm watching it because I just turned my brain off for fun. That being said, this movie doesn't make it exactly hard to see some of those things, and some of it is very intrinsic to metal, specifically of the black metal variety, but also music as a whole. There's always this kind of worry when it comes to music, between things not being heavy enough - when it's in reference to metal, you know, this is Baby Metal, or this is. Sleep Token. They're not heavy enough to be metal. Whatever, it happens all the time. I don't know if it necessarily qualifies as gatekeeping or if it's just people have different opinions and you have your own opinion, so you got to kind of decide by yourself really. The whole opinions thing also actually does get brought up in this movie. Its pretty on the nose about it, so even though I'm coming into this movie expecting jokes and a good time and I'm not thinking that hard about mostly anything that's going on, it's not hard to see commentary about how a label could take a band to just change it into something it's not, or how greed can corrupt somebody so that they just don't care about these other things anymore or how some people just don't have their priorities in the right place. None of it is exactly hidden, but how much you're going to actually dig into it is probably going to really factor into how much of it you think about while you're watching the movie. Because although it brings it all up, it doesn't really feel like it's forcing it upon you. Until, of course, you got. That main character arc that's in the movie that every band related movie tends up having when the tensions between 1 member of the band and everybody else is so high and it needs to be fixed.
Baby Metal.
When long ago, probably two or three years ago, I saw the trailer for this movie it told me I was going to have a good time, so I added it to my log of movies I need to check out when they come out. Since then I have forgotten about it and then just now realize I still haven't seen that one movie about the metal band, proceeded to luck out and got to watch it tonight because I really did have a good time with this. Coming off of the super frustration of the lady that didn't get killed by the meth gators that really deserve to be eaten by meth gators on that other movie, this was a very well deserved change of pace. The Easter eggs are plentiful, some straight up on the nose - like literally Lemmy's hat. Other little references that a person who's really paying attention could probably pick up on, like the drummer who gets possessed (maybe it's just me thinking that's awfully a lot like the drummer in The Gorillaz who happens to get possessed in that Clint Eastwood song), or comments about font. Either way, there's a lot of stuff in here that you'll probably get more mileage from if you are into the genre and the music and the scene, but even without it you still have a pretty solid movie that, although it doesn't necessarily paint outside the box. Still handles that box very well. It's fun, it's got jokes, it's got good tunes, it's put together well even when you can see things coming, and overall it's just a dang good time. I have also found out doing this review that this is a sequel to Heavy Trip, so I guess I’m going to have to look that one up now.