Everybody air guitars, or at least has air guitared at some point in their lives. You know how it is. Either you’re blocking off the world by blasting the most jamkicking tubular rock tune on your iPod, or maybe you have the house to yourself and see an opportunity to crank out your stereo, a hard lick of the guitar sound makes your head bob and your arms wailing. Flailing your arm to the power chords is easy; but syncing your movements to the sound of the guitar and convince people that you’re holding an invisible guitar? That’s performance art.
When you think of the idea of competing your talent as an air guitarist, it sounds very silly. Grown ups pretending to be rock gods, strumming an imaginary instrument? What are we, French mimes? But you joke long enough and pretty soon you start to buy into your own hype. That’s basically what happened to the Air Guitar World Championship; a contest that started as a joke between some college guys in Finland and now, over a decade later, is a huge music festival with contestants from all over the world, supporting world peace and endorsed by Queen guitarist Brian May. It’s Woodstock for the untalented.
Air Guitar Nation very matter-of-factly chronicles the birth of the US division of the phenomenon, before following the first US champion David Jung aka C-Diddy to Finland, to compete on the world stage. If you watch the news, or frequent the internet, you might have seen a photo of this guy. He’s that funny-looking Asian man with a big Hello Kitty breastplate on his chest. Like any great rock doc, a rivalry is needed to spice up the story. C-Diddy’s bitter nemesis is Bjorn Turoque, who keeps losing to C-Diddy in America and follows him to Finland on his own money to settle the score. Unlike C-Diddy, Bjorn doesn’t go for laughs and takes his air guitaring very seriously. It’s utter madness how one can develop a long-standing feud over who’s the better air guitarist – at times it feels like a real version of Spinal Tap – but that’s the charm of the film; you just can’t believe how serious these people are, and it’s hilarious (but also kind of inspiring) to watch.
You may not know it, but 2003 was a landmark year for the United States. It was not only the start of the US Air Guitar Championships, but it was also the first year America had a representative in the World Championships. Oh, and we invaded Iraq too. There’s an extra hurdle in terms of the Anti-Americanism that feverishly plagued Europe at the time, seeing these yanks as warmongers who support Bush’s War on Terror. Bjorn Turoque has to take this from the people he meets and swallow insults, which leads to his catchphrase “Make AIR Not War.”
Perhaps because the US was still young in this, they treated it jokingly. C-Diddy is certainly a great air guitarist, but he’s also the most outlandish looking and funniest. This becomes apparent when he arrives in Finland and is called a “stripper” by the other contestants. In contrast, Bjorn is feared and praised. The judges of the event also let known that they are looking for skill, not laughs. The question then is: can C-Diddy cut it? Can they look past the girly cartoon cat on his get-up?
If the doc feels a lot like a condensed reality show, it should, because it’s produced by the same people that brought you shows like Project Greenlight, Project Runway, and Last Comic Standing. It has the reality show staple of showing a documented situation and having interviewees comment on those specific situations. You wonder if the Bjorn/C-Diddy rivalry was not staged/manipulated to bring more drama, but does it really matter? Air Guitar Nation is already pretty slapstick-y and out there in the first place. It’s also broad in its comedy and very layman in revealing information. Like a reality show, it’s hollow and doesn’t show you much insight, but it does what they do best: make people laugh. And this film is certainly very funny, though much of it rests on the performances. It’s arguable that it’d be just as funny to watch the competition instead of the film.
It’s not the kind of documentary you watch for the benefits, but the kind you show to virgin-eyed friends to pop their air guitar cherry. And with this one, you'll want as many of your friends to see its awesomeness.
"Air Guitar Nation" opens March 23, 2007 and is rated . . Written by N/A.
