To some people air guitar is an art and to others it’s just a joke. The Fins take it extremely seriously and even have a yearly competition to find the best strummer of air. There’s never been a U.S. contingent to this competition – until now.
Two fellows read about the annual air guitar competition in Finland (if I remember correctly in the Wall Street Journal no less) and were fascinated enough to travel their for the annual event. They travel to the competition but are startled to learn that there has never been an air guitarist to represent the United States in competition at the festival. So when they return to the states they decide to have a competition of their own to find an American air guitarist to send to Finland to compete.
They have an east coast competition and a west coast competition with the winners sparring off in a winner-take-all showdown. Director Alexandra Lipsitz takes her camera and follows the drama of competition. David Jung puts on the persona of “C-Diddy” the samurai air guitarist who has a Hello Kitty breastplate. He wins the American contest and is poised to head for the big contest.
A close second is Dan Crane as Bjorn Turoque (Born to Rock, get it?). You’ll have to admire Bjorn’s tenacity in that he loses the contest but is still determined to get to Finland and take part in the big contest.
Who know that the Fins took their air guitar so seriously? They have a retreat for the competitors and have seminars like how to care for your air instrument or how to deal with air guitar groupies. I think there were some panties thrown on the stage during the competition, much to my dismay.
Call me an ugly American but this seems to be quite in the extreme, especially when you’re talking about the care and maintenance of an imaginary instrument. All ugliness aside the documentary is really quite fascinating. C-Diddy is really quite a character, but he’s also very different than his real life counter part.
Bjorn seems to be quite similar to his real life counterpart but you have to somehow admire his dogged pursuit to bring his skills to the competition (although he does come off a little conceited at times). The documentary has a charm to it and it is fun to see these fellows get up there and catch air. You have to credit filmmaker Lipsitz with finding an original and interesting subject matter (and the Fins for a singular obsession).
Air Guitar Nation is presented in fullscreen. Special features include 37 minutes of deleted scenes. These include some more air guitar performances and updates on what C-Diddy and Turoque did after the competition. Next is the 3-minute theatrical trailer, information about Docudrama films, and trailers for their other films.
Air Guitar Nation takes something that could’ve been easily mocked and actually turns out to be a pretty entertaining little documentary. Although I really never did figure out how to string my air guitar.
Air Guitar Nation is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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