Heavy Trip

It's the first time in my life that i am writing a rewiew and i feel deep inside of me that i had to do it.

to tell you the truth i didn't even knew the existence of that film..i don't even remember where i found it but it was worthing my time.a very nice movie funny easy to watch and to enjoy.i recommend highly to all metal heads and if you are not familiar with metal it doesnt matter you will love it too.

i have to say that as a Greek i loved the Finnish language,i cant imagine that movie in English.

This is an absolutely hilarious dark comedy of a Finnish jerkwater heavy metal band, with all the tropes and cliches of the heavy metal culture present, both defied, averted, downplayed and absolutely played straight. A brilliant example of Finnish contemporary movie culture.

This moie is about a talented but an absolutely shy and introverted heavy metal band, who after 12 years of jamming and playing together in a basement of a reindeer slaughterhouse (where one of the members work), finally wants to make the big break and aims high. And everything goes horribly right.

If you are a metalhead, LARPer or generally interested in the geek culture, this movie is a must!

Turo (Johannes Holopainen) and his buddies Lutvonen (Samuli Jaskio), Jynkky (Antti Heikkinen) and Pasi (Max Ouaska) have been friends since childhood in their remote Northern Finnish village, but they're all misfits; they bond over creating a heavy metal band in which they do great covers of other bands' songs and which never, ever plays before a live audience. You see, Turo has crippling stage fright, though he tries to hide it from his friends. He's also in love with Mila (Minka Kuustonen), but she's taken the eye of relatively successful lounge singer Jouni (Ville Tihonen) and Turo is just too shy to say a word. Until, that is, the opportunity arises for the band to play a heavy metal festival in Norway - if they can only get there in one piece....Here you've got a head-banging road trip comedy in which everything is against our heroes but still they strive to overcome. It's in equal parts deafeningly loud, hilariously funny and actively madcap with respect to the adventures these young men find themselves stumbling into. There's even a Spinal-Tappish scene that practically outdoes Spinal Tap, which is *really* saying something. Great noisy fun!

"Heavy Trip" joins my list of movies about a specific genre of music that everyone can enjoy even if you don't know, or even hate, the genre. Other films include the Japanese "Swing Girls" (swing & old school jazz), the American indie "Patti Cake$" (rap) and of course the ones that started them all, the Christopher Guest music mockumentaries "A Mighty Wind" (folk) and "This Is Spinal Tap" (hard rock). How do these films work so well? It's because foremost they introduce funny, quirky, loveable losers whom we can all associate with, regardless of musical taste, cultural origin or language. When done right, the story of the artistic underdog is universal.

Here we are introduced to 4 of the loveable-est, loser-est underdogs who ever cranked their amps to 11. The main character "Turo" is a long-haired metalhead who can't seem to get on stage without vomiting like a possessed demon girl. He is joined by his bandmates "Pasi" a freakish bass genius who's 1 pocket protector short of Einstein, "Jynkky" a drummer who's so hardcore he keeps the beat even during heart failure, and the guitarist "Lotvonen" who draws inspiration from the sounds of reindeer carcasses being ground into hamburger.

(Quick note about reindeer mutilations and the sort. All animal action is hilariously fake, including one wrestling scene with a crazed wolverine that is quite obviously a stuffed prop. No animals were sacrificed, nor actual reindeer blood spilled, in the making of this film. I hope.)

What follows is a cute, quirky, quasi-surreal unfolding of events surrounding the efforts of their band "IMPALED REKTUM" to make it to a metal festival in Norway, including but not limited to, attacks by rival lounge singers, questionable cops, a few rocket launchers, sword wielding Vikings, and perhaps even death itself. Do they ever make it to the show? Tune in and find out.

This sentence perfectly summarizes the Finnish comedy "Heavy Trip". In some backwoods in Finland, four metalheads have been practicing other people's songs for twelve years, without having one of their own, nor have they ever performed before the audience. By chance, they encounter one of the organizers of the biggest Norwegian metal festival and give him their demo tape. On one occasion, it was convenient to frontman to lie that they were invited to participate in the festival, but then the lie spread and situation got completely out of control. The band decides to write an original song and appear at the festival uninvited, come what may. Of course, anything that can go wrong will go wrong and the guys will find themselves in the wildest adventure of their lives.

I can not say that the movie is objectively particularly good, but as a metalhead myself, I really enjoyed the ride. The story is original, and adventure is, although totally over-the-top, essentially very realistic and full of life. The humor is mostly mediocre, but there are some hilarious moments, and there's some touching drama too. The acting is good and dialogues I can not judge because I do not speak Finnish and I do not trust subtitles nearly enough to evaluate based solely on them. And of course, the metal sound is something I'm always happy to hear in the movie, even if it's a subgenre that I do not normally listen to. If you do not have too high expectations, you will surely have good fun.

7/10