Hitting the right note: ‘Anvil!’ documents the story of an obscure heavy metal band

In movieland, there's something in the air. It smells like BenGay, and it's coming from the Baby Boom.

We all knew this was looming, and some of us were dreading it - the most self-regarding generation in history, faced with age and mortality, would start making movies about its golden years. Insufferable movies, featuring old people with bionic joints and blue pills and Depends, raging against the dying of the light.

Now the shocking news: So far, the movies have been pretty good. And eerily similar - touching sagas about over-the-hill entertainers, for whom a last grasp at the big time is less an ego trip than soulful cry of the heart - "The Wrestler," "The Great Buck Howard," and now "Anvil!: The Story of Anvil," a documentary about an obscure metal band from Canada.

The movie is a small wonder, because it's not the work of a practiced filmmaker - Sacha Gervasi is a writer and Anvil fan who shot the movie on a whim, but he has a great eye, and is evidently an editing whiz.

Gaining the trust of his subjects was no doubt the easy part - Gervasi is a metalhead, and his familiarity with Anvil lore is evident in the crisp intro. In 1982, he reports, four heavy metal bands played a big show in Japan. Three made it big (don't ask me who), and one did not.

Enter Anvil, and it's two core members - Steve "Lips" Kudlow and Robb Reiner. Yes, that's the man's name, and yes, his band has more than a few things in common with Spinal Tap, the subject of the other Reiner's famous mockumentary (which has been completely assimilated into metal culture. Nowadays, as we see, all studio amplifiers go up to 11.).

It turns out that truth rocks way more than fiction, and "Anvil" generates laughs and even a few tears as it relates the back-stories of Steve and "Robb-O," teen pals/rockers who are now paunchy family men working menial jobs and making albums (they've made 12).

We meet their parents, kids, brothers, and sisters, though Lips and Robb-O are really the old married couple here. We watch them bicker and bond during a catastrophic European tour, arranged by another fan. The highlight is a Monsters of Transylvania show before 174 folks. The lowlight is a gig in Prague saloon before a crowd of three.

A lesser band might have collapsed, but not Anvil. That which does not kill you makes you rock (OK, I'll stop now), and they borrow $12,000 to hire a reputable producer for their next record, in hopes of attracting a decent label. This fails, but they catch the eye of a promoter, who books them for a Tokyo concert that brings Anvil full circle, and stands in the movie as a make 'em or break 'em moment.

It's one of many good ones in Gervasi's movie, which is brisk, punchy and canny - he saves revelatory material for the right moment, and drops small emotional bombs along the way.

You needn't be a metal fan to appreciate this follow-your-screams story, and "Anvil" will not persuade you to buy their music. I'm sorry, though, that I missed that Transylvania show. *

Produced by Rebecca Yeldham, d*rected by Sacha Gervas*, mus*c by Dav*d Norland, d*str*buted by Abramorama.