"Anvil!" is a funny, touching true rock tale

Steve "Lips" Kudlow, lead singer and guitarist for the Canadian heavy-metal band Anvil, could teach the rest of us a thing or two about looking on the bright side. After a comically disastrous European tour with his band (plagued by missed trains, mismanagement, promoters who wouldn't pay, and 5,000-capacity arenas with 174 people in them), he sums up the experience thusly: "Things went drastically wrong, but at least there was a tour for it to go wrong on."

This kind of optimism is essential, we learn, if you're a member of Anvil, a band that was briefly hot in the early '80s only to slip into obscurity. Nonetheless, founding members Kudlow and Robb Reiner (drums), now with their long hair thinning on top, are still rocking. And Sasha Gervasi's irresistible documentary "Anvil! The Story of Anvil" (it's a charmingly lunkheaded title) lets us rock with them.

Despite a brief shot, in a recording studio, of a dial that goes up to 11 (it's one louder, isn't it?), this is no "Spinal Tap" — Kudlow and Reiner are all too real, and their disappointment at fame passing them by is often touching. We meet their supportive family members in their modest Toronto homes, see them at their day jobs, learn their non-rock hobbies. (Reiner paints, quite plausibly, in the style of Edward Hopper — "It's a very quiet place, you know?") And we see them trying anything to get the band jump-started again.

Kudrow, desperate for money to finance a new album, takes a telephone sales job (offered by a longtime fan known as Cut Loose) but fails miserably; he's a guy who performs onstage in an S&M harness, but is, alas, too polite to be a telemarketer.

And a strange thing happens while watching this film: You become an Anvil fan, just like the well-mannered Japanese man who greets Kudlow with "Hello, Mr. Lips," or the concertgoers who sway their hair in unison to the beat. There's just something utterly winning about the way the guys of Anvil hang on to their dream — and when, in the movie's final scenes, they find it for a moment, it creates some genuine, headbanging joy.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com