Austin Film Festival

AUSTIN -- How do you get to the Hammersmith Odeon? Practice, practice, practice -- or, you could steal a magic guitar pick carved from the pointy tooth of Beelzebub himself.

A pair of chunky dreamers try the latter route in "Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny," which isn't as fresh or weird as the short films that made Tenacious D cult heroes but does capture enough of their spirit to please fans. The theatrical draw isn't likely to extend far beyond the already-converted, but repeat business could be good, especially in areas where dime bags are easy to come by.

Front-loaded with laughs, the tale launches with an origin told in song: Actor Troy Gentile, who portrayed a young Jack Black in "Nacho Libre," returns to depict our hero's formative teenage rebellion, perfectly imitating Black's ecstasies of stagecraft and communing with the spirit of Ronnie James Dio. Before the laughs have subsided, little JB is all grown up and seeking stardom with new bandmate Kyle Gass.

Frustrated by a lack of inspiration and the ever-present question of rent, the eager young rockers learn of a magic pick that has been passed from one guitar hero to another and is now carefully guarded in a museum of rock 'n' roll history. The movie loses some steam once the boys actually hit the road, despite a trippy sequence involving Sasquatch and a slightly too-goofy cameo by Tim Robbins. By the time the pair gets caught up in a televised car chase with the fuzz, the skimpy plot feels as familiar as twice-reheated pizza.

In concocting their first feature-length outing, Black and Gass (with director Liam Lynch) borrow bits of plot from their music videos and sadly short-lived HBO series, stopping just shy of outright cannibalism. Viewers familiar with the group's "complete masterworks" may find that the adventures had more charm in miniature, where their delusions of grandeur would be thwarted and reborn in a dozen minutes or so. However, some story elements (like a climactic showdown with Satan) benefit from this larger scale.

Left to the realm of daydreams is what the band might have done with a bigger budget: Given a serious special effects allowance and a director like Spike Jonze (who made their "Wonderboy" video), could they have gotten more mileage out of playing the wannabes' penny-ante realities against epic fantasy sequences incorporating the mythological themes of their heavy metal dreams? (Ideally, Black's "King Kong" director Peter Jackson could guest-direct a sequence with some leftover "Rings" gear.) The material certainly lends itself to that sort of thing.

Then again, the TV show proved the value of one special effect -- the innocent debauchery and eternal optimism of these two guys who really believe they can wear the boots of Black Sabbath -- that didn't cost a dime.