SMELL THE GLOVE

REVIEWED - METALLICA: SOME KIND OF MONSTER: This often hilarious documentary concerning the heavy metal band Metallica accidentally contains some big ideas about What Is Wrong With America Today. Is that nation's obsession with therapy-speak really so out of control that even the once-hairy members of the world's loudest band feel the need to seek out empathy, validation and all that other rubbish? So it would seem.

One of the principal characters in Some Kind of Monster is Phil Towle, a psycho-something-or-other with terrible taste in knitwear, hired by Metallica to help them learn to love one another again. On the evidence of the film, Phil's main job is to nod his way through every outburst and then, with passive-aggressive containment, murmur, "It's OK that you feel that. It's good that you feel that." In a particularly amusing scene, Phil manages to interpret the band's desire to sack him as evidence of a supposed collective psychosis. Some kind of monster, indeed.

So why no allusions to Spinal Tap? We're getting there. The film focuses most acutely on the relationship between singer James Hetfield, a burly malcontent with a drinking problem, and drummer Lars Ulrich. The two old friends have always thrived on conflict, but, following the loss of the group's bassist, the tension between this Byron and that Shelley threatens to pull Metallica apart. As the recording of the latest album drags on, guitarist Kirk Hammett, who rarely speaks but usually makes sense, lies between fire and ice like lukewarm water.

Metallica fans have, surprisingly enough, rather taken to the film. Perhaps the band's preciousness plays better on the other side of the Atlantic, but to these eyes Ulrich and Hetfield come across as preposterous buffoons with a dangerously misguided confidence in their powers of self-analysis. Moreover, surely the last thing a heavy metal band - even one comprising middle-aged men - requires is peace, harmony and an ability to feel each other's pain. Somehow I can't imagine Lemmy in therapy.

Anyway, though at least 20 minutes too long, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster is an astutely edited documentary in which, if I read them correctly, the film-makers take a cheekily subversive position on the men who invited them into their lives. The highlight comes when Urich's bizarrely bearded Danish father, a cross between Gandalf and Tolstoy, suggests the guys may have "a fear of status quo". You can see where I'm going with this.