There are many ways to make two hours feel like two years. You could play nude twister with Dick Cheney, crawl on your hands and knees through broken glass or listen to Carrot Top talk about anything. If none of these sound appealing, try watching the new Metallica documentary, “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster,” the most recent step in Metallica’s admirable effort to alienate everyone.
“Some Kind of Monster” documents Metallica during the making of their first studio album in five years, “St. Anger.” The directors, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, followed the band around for more than three years and shot more than 1,200 hours of footage. Spending three years with Metallica is the only thing I can imagine being
more painful than watching the
actual film.
Metallica’s longtime bassist, Jason Newsted, has left the band to pursue his side-project, Echobrain, and out of fear for the band’s future, its management team has enlisted a therapist to help the band work through its personal and professional challenges. The relationship between vocalist/guitarist James Hetfield and drummer/founder Lars Ulrich is similar to that of a 12-year-old sister and her 10-year-old
brother on a long car trip. Their bickering is constant and places the viewer in serious danger of an aneurysm. The majority of the movie is more or less a group therapy session peppered with cameos, temper tantrums and sidebars about the band members’ personal lives.
Throughout the course of the film, the directors provide snapshots of the band members’ outside interests. Hetfield likes driving hot rods and riding motorcycles, Ulrich collects art and Kirk Hammett, the now-sober guitarist, enjoys surfing and hanging out on his ranch. A profile begins to develop for each member. Hetfield is the gruff, smoldering bad-boy who can’t effectively communicate his feelings. Ulrich is the faux-bohemian Swede who would like to think of himself as intellectual and artsy but is really just the drummer for a band especially popular among rednecks and football players. Hammett, with his stoner drawl and sincere attempts at conflict resolution, comes across as a nice kid stuck in the middle of a messy divorce. Hammett is by far the most likable member of the band. He tries his best to keep his ego under control and only really gets upset when Ulrich suggests that guitar solos are outdated.
The drama peaks when Hetfield storms out of the recording studio after an intense argument with Ulrich over one of Hammett’s guitar lines. Unexpectedly, Hetfield checks himself into a rehabilitation center for his alcoholism, putting the future of the forthcoming album, as well as the band, in question. Predictably, he returns after several months, clean-cut and highly regimented, ready to write lame lyrics for the lame album that his lame band is putting out.
The documentary then wraps everything up in a tidy little bow with the auditions for a new bassist. Perhaps the most entertaining part of the film, the audition montage features astonishingly poor attempts by the former bassists of Marilyn Manson, Alanis Morrissette, Nine Inch Nails and more. In the end, they decide on Robert Trujillo, a bassist who has played with the likes of Infectious Grooves, Suicidal Tendencies and Ozzy Osbourne.
I’m sure that the band’s original intent for this film was to pull in fans, involve them personally and bounce back from all of the negative publicity that resulted from Ulrich’s attack on Napster. The reality of the film is that it will probably solidify the opinions of those who already think of Metallica as whiny divas whose glory days are far behind them and push stalwart fans away by destroying their last shred of faith in the band’s credibility. Ulrich told Rolling Stone in an interview that the film was not about Metallica, but about relationships. The fact is, no matter how you slice it, this movie is about Metallica and how washed up they really are.

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