Rating: 9/10
Directors: Greg Oliver and Wes Orshoski
Motörhead is one of the most influential metal bands still playing today and they even have influenced other legendary metal bands like Metallica and Pantera. James Hetfield, frontman of Metallica even claims that they “try to be as cool as Lemmy.” The front man of the band, Lemmy Kilmister, has lived quite an interesting life and at 64-years-old, he lives as the embodiment of rock n’ roll.
The film isn’t just the crew following Lemmy around, it’s much more than that. The film delves itself into the essence of Lemmy, and touches on some really personal topics. They don’t even shy away from his traumatic childhood, or the only time he was ever in love (it didn’t end well). It’s a deep study into the life of a man who doesn’t need fame or fortune, he is just trying to live life the way he knows how to, all while enjoying it.
LEMMY is non-stop footage of Lemmy being a bad-ass and completely hilarious. Lemmy is a surprisingly funny guy, throughout the film he shows how much he values humor. More often than not it’s unintentionally funny, but Lemmy is always ready to laugh it off. When Lemmy dons his metal-ized Nazi uniform (he is a WWII enthusiast), it is funny in a completely awkward way and only becomes even funnier when he explains how and why isn’t a Nazi. Even when these awkward things happen to Lemmy he just enjoys it – thats what makes this so enjoyabe. He even has a mini face-off (remember those?) with a Big Mouth Billy Bass, which is one of the highlights of the film.
Over the course of LEMMY, interviews are conducted with other rock legends. Each of which have a lot to say about Lemmy and how important he is to rock n’ roll music. Legends like Dave Grohl, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Scott Ian, Joan Jett, and Alice Cooper all go discuss about how important Lemmy is to rock and music in general.
LEMMY doesn’t really have much in the way of narrative structure. In fact, oftentimes the order makes little to no sense. They start talking about Lemmy’s childhood three-fourths of the way into LEMMY. You would figure the directors would cover his childhood early on in LEMMY, not near the end. It was a little weird because the film seemed like it was at its close the scene before. A film like this doesn’t necessarily need an apparent structure, but it was a little awkward in this case.
The film is also a little too long. It’s runtime is about two hours and after the hour and a half point you start to feel it. There is a performance with Metallica where they show the entire song. Of course, it was great seeing them perform together, but it just made the movie drag. The upside to the length, is that every time the film starts to feel really long something fun happens.
LEMMY is a really entertaining documentary that is enjoyable from beginning to end. It proves that every facet of someone can truly be iconic. It is an easy suggestions for metalheads, but truly transcends that and is accessible to everyone because of all the humor. There is just something so endearing about a hard drinkin’, hard rockin’, video game playin’ rock star.
John Mulhern Writes 