I used to like Metallica (up to and including the eponymous “black album”, which is why I thought I’d give this documentary a chance. Oh, but… FAIL. Maybe if they’d done this movie fifteen years ago about a much better album, it’d have been far less disappointing. Alas, alack. Here, let me save you all the trouble and sum it up for you real quick-like:

a) Lars Ulrich is a petulant little baby
b) Alcoholism and its subsequent stints in rehab which go a long way to tearing a band apart from the inside out are such rock and roll cliches. I mean, come on.
c) Man, does it suck to be Kirk Hammett in this scenario.

If you prefer to see these three points illustrated over and over again during the course of three hours… ehh. Maybe only the really hardcore fans would enjoy this.

This was the third time I’ve seen the film and I’m still spellbound by every scene. It’s so raw, so interesting; about what the art form of the rock song requires, about what it’s like to grow up in a close-knit collective, about the selfishness of alcoholics (recovering or not). About how Lars Ulrich has great, Danish taste, and about his dad, and about how James H considers a very sad, deeply uncool therapist called Phil an angel and a father figure, and about how Kirk just wants to be a model of egoless living and ends up invisible, and about how you replace a musician and a friend who died when you were all just babies with big hair really.

I was at the gig at the end of the movie and I remember the gratitude Metallica expressed for our loyalty was a little bit embarrassing. I didn’t really want to see James Hetfield with tears in his eyes. And of course this movie explains why that was, and it turns out it wasn’t goody-goody spirituality or oversharing at all: it was necessary and humble.