Anvil’s Lips and drummer Robb Reiner play in a scene from Anvil! The Story of Anvil.

brentjcraig.com / Brent J. Craig

You can easily see from television talent contest programs such as American Idol that there are plenty of dreams of fame and fortune out there.

Yet those who go on to make it, who are blessed not only with the talent but the drive to succeed, are few and far between. Sad to tell, there are very few Susan Boyles who are plucked from obscurity and showered with sudden international fame. But the fact that one in a million can make it is something that is celebrated by the media. It’s made to look so easy, which is why so many keep trying against all odds. However, sometimes talent and drive are no match for what seems to be a round of just plain bad luck … or simply of not being in the right place at the right time.

That seems to be the case with the Canadian heavy metal band Anvil, the subject of Sacha Gervasi’s engaging documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil. Some have called it the real-life version of Rob Reiner’s hit 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, which hilariously followed the ups and downs of a fictitious band in realistic style as they went from being celebrated as “England’s loudest band” into the “where are they now?” file.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil is not quite all that. Although it follows much the same arc as This Is Spinal Tap, because it deals with real people the film is much more balanced, more heartfelt and more melancholy. One can see the folly of the two principal band members who started playing together at the age of 14 in a suburban basement and now, in their early 50s, still pursue a dream of rock stardom in a relationship that is sometimes rocky. Yet one doesn’t laugh.

Coincidentally, Anvil! The Story of Anvil begins about the same time This Is Spinal Tap was released, in the summer of 1984 where we see Anvil at the Super Rock Festival in a huge stadium outside Tokyo, decked out in studded collars and leather harnesses, playing head-banging music alongside some of the biggest rock bands of the era and winning just as much applause from the crowd.

Scott Ian of Anthrax recalled saying of Anvil at the time, “If we can’t be better than that, we should just go home.” At the time, Lars Ulrich of Metallica predicted they would “turn the musical world upside down.” Malcolm Dome of Metal Hammer magazine said, “If you had to choose one band and one album that really started the ball rolling, it would be Metal on Metal and it would be Anvil.”

But while the other bands at the Super Rock Festival went on to worldwide fame, Anvil did not. As Slash, of Guns and Roses says, “Everyone just ripped them off and left them for dead.”

Well, not quite dead. They still have a big fan base in Europe and Japan. But although the two founding members — Steve Kudlow, who is known as Lips, and Robb Reiner, whose name coincidentally is nearly the same as the director of This Is Spinal Tap — have held the band together for nearly 30 years and still dream of hitting the big time, at this stage of their lives it seems like a no-win situation. On his way to pick up a delivery for the school lunch catering program he works for in snowy Toronto, Kudlow says that while Anvil doesn’t make any money, “it feels that it can only get better.”

They play small clubs in suburban Toronto, followed religiously by a team of aging metal-head groupies, or at Ontario wedding receptions where most of the middle-aged guests seem bewildered by their heavy metal music. It’s not long before one realizes Kudlow and Reiner are living in a parallel universe of their own making. Here, fame always seems to be just around the corner, yet always tantalizingly just out of reach.

Their career is a series of highs and lows. A surprise call from a female manager who offers them a month-long European tour spurs them to feel that their big break might be about to arrive. But it turns out that Tiziana Arrigoni, the manager, has more good intentions than she has management — or English-language — skills. After circling the streets of Prague for two hours while trying to find a club, the owner refuses to pay them because they arrived late for their show and many of the paying customers had left. Later they arrive at a railway station to find there are no more seats on their train; still later at another station to see their train pulling away. In Munich there are no posters or advance promotions for the show. In another city, the club looks like the catacombs. In Romania there are big crowds, but still no offers for an album.

Then they get a call from a British record producer who has done wonders for Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy and wants to record them. But he needs more than $25,000 to put it all together.

Despite it all, some of Kudlow’s siblings, all of them business successes, pull for him to fulfill the dream of rock stardom he has had since he was 14. Gervasi, a big Anvil fan himself, interviews not only the band members, but their families as well, coming away with telling interviews.

During the album recording in Britain — for which one of Kudlow’s sisters puts up the money — it becomes apparent that Kudlow and Reiner, whose musical partnership has endured longer than many marriages — are in a very strange way “married.” As in most marriages there are highs and lows, with frequent battles that take an emotional toll. “He lives to hurt me,” whines Reiner at one point as he feels the pain of Kudlow’s histrionics. Eventually, like warring spouses, they make up, with tears and apologies.

Gervasi has captured some very personal moments with his camera and some very honest ones. At one point Kudlow and Reiner, still riding on high hopes for their new album, visit a producer at a big record company in Canada. They leave still feeling hopeful, although from what we see of the meeting on screen, it’s clear that the producer is trying to let them down in the nicest, most pleasant way.

And while Kudlow’s sister Rhonda is still pulling for them to succeed, one can’t help but agree with Reiner’s sister, Droid, who declares, “It’s over. It’s been over for a long time.”

Yet for every downturn, there’s an uptick. And it’s these sometimes minor, but sometimes pretty big carrots that prod Kudlow and Reiner ever onward. At the end of Anvil! The Story of Anvil, you may just want to hunt down a copy of This Is Thirteen, their latest album, which they’ve been selling at the door of some of their club dates in hopes of recouping their investment.

****The Story of Anvil

Starring: Steve Kudlow, Robb Reiner.

Rated: Not rated, contains profanity, drugs, adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com