REVIEWED - TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINYJack Black is fun company, but this silly headbanger spoof is stretched too thin, writes Donald Clarke

YOU would hardly expect a film featuring Tenacious D, the comic hard-rock duo comprising Jack Black and somebody else, to be a model of restraint, order and structure. Sure enough, in the spirit of their meandering, foul-mouthed songs, Pick of Destiny is a ramshackle affair that looks and sounds as if it were written in the studio canteen minutes before the crew arrived.

Making Beavis and Butt-head Do America seem like Chinatown, the script sends its heroes - a pair of stoned losers resident in west LA - in search of a possessed guitar pick that will enable them to play riffs as diabolical as those of AC/DC, Led Zeppelin or The Who. Along the way they encounter an aged European rocker played by Tim Robbins, Satan in the form of Dave Grohl and, with deadening inevitability, a clutch of morally flexible college girls. Prison riots have been carried off in more disciplined fashion.

None of which mild criticism will - or should in itself - distress Tenacious D's many fans. All they will ask is that the film puts the band in the way of a microphone from time to time and allows the duo ample opportunity to puff copious amounts of controlled substances.

After all, few punters have seen fit to complain about the lack of structure in the hilarious Borat. But, sad to relate, the D's shtick is spread perilously thin over the film's modest 93 minutes.

An opening, sung-through sequence - oddly reminiscent of scenes from Tommy - in which Jack's Christian dad (Meatloaf, hooray!) throws the boy out of the house, demonstrates one way the film-makers might have made sense of the project. Thereafter virtually every episode is extended to quite tedious length.

Black and the other person should be made aware that there are only so many jokes that can be had at the expense of an art form already so self-parodic as heavy metal (and most of those were made 22 years ago in This Is Spinal Tap). Jack is, of course, pleasant company to be around and the project radiates decency and good humour throughout. But Pick of Destiny will have trouble winning over audiences not already rendered comically compliant by hemp derivatives. Goodnight, Cleveland!