What crap!. How painful it was to have to site there and watch Jimmy Page show off while it appears that The Edge is asking himself why he is even there. The Edge even says that he can not stand the 15 minute solos of the 70's guitarist. Yet there he is with one of the worst offenders! Then we drift into the same old story. Bleak childhood, the blues and escaping from what was being done at the time. Jeez. What is the point of this movie? In retrospect is seems that what Jimmy Page did was showcase himself against Edge's minimalism and Jack's elementary style to point out that he is still the master. Where was Eddie Van Halen?

So before I get into this I need to point out that there was no way I wasn't going to like this film. It's freaking Jimmy Page, Jack White, and The Edge. Led Zeppelin and The White Stripes are two of my all time favorite bands, so a documentary centered around the guitarists from those bands is a dream come true. So let me just point out that there is a little bit of bias in this review.It Might Get Loud is a documentary from acclaimed director Davis Guggenheim, the Oscar winning director of An Inconvenient Truth. In the film Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Jack White of The White Stripes, and The Edge of U2 get together and basically just have one of the most wicked jam sessions known to man. This is only about 25% of the film though. The other 75% is separate interviews with the three rockers conducted at their recording studios in London, Dublin and Seattle respectively. In these interviews the three talk about their love of music, their fascination with the capabilities of the electric guitar, and their inspiration to write certain songs that we all know and love from their bands. The things they have to say are incredible and watching them so fully and eloquently express their love for music is something absolutely magical to watch on screen.The film opens with Jack White making some odd little gizmo out of a glass coke bottle, a few blocks of wood, and a string, all attached to an amp. He starts nailing wood together, tying string around the nails, placing the coke bottle, etc. It's very unclear what exactly he is doing as there is no dialouge. Finally he finishes his contraption and starts to press down on the string and make a great little riff out of it as it rocks the amp next to him. He then follows up by saying, "See? Who said you need a guitar to play music?" From here the movie begins and we know we are in for quite the treat watching these three geniuses work. And that's what is so great about this film. It doesn't just bring together any old trio of guitarists to play together, it groups three of the most influential musicians of rock music there are. And the trio also span the wide time span of rock. You've got Jimmy Page who was at his peak in the 70's, playing some of the most memorable and incredible licks ever heard. The Edge who inspired a whole generation of contemporary modern rock through his innovation in U2. And then you've got Jack White, the youngest of the three whose highly experimental guitar techniques have created some of the greatest songs of the post modern rock era. These three guys know what they're talking about and they all share identical passions and are all three amazing guys.But putting aside everything I love about these three musicians, the film itself is just a really well made documentary. It flows excellently, it gives equal screen time to the three musicians and the film itself excellently portrays and illustrates their individual stories. There is a ton of great archival footage and pictures that take us through the old days of Zeppelin, U2, and the White Stripes (even though archival for them means something like 1999). The film also allows the guys to tell their own stories themselves. Davis Guggenheim doesn't impede on their stories at all. He is never on camera and you only hear his voice two or three times in the entire film. He makes the film about the guitarists and everything encompassing them and their passion for music. They all have profoundly interesting things to say, and Guggenheim knows and respects this by letting them do all the talking and then just providing a plethora of great visuals to go along with their stories.I've seen some cool stuff in movies, but I just don't know that anything could ever top seeing a jam session from these three rockers. It is seriously one of the most amazing things you'll ever see to watch three men with such talent and such love for what their doing collaborate together and engage each other in what they all three love to do, which is to rock on the electric guitar. Seeing these three play Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of Dying" together is so awesome it could only be compared to, let's say, the birth of baby Jesus himself. It is seriously that cool. As is the entire movie. This film is just incredible and you'll never see any documentary quite like this, at least not with this much talent collaborating together in the same room. This is quite possibly one of the greatest documentaries ever made.

nutty as it seems, with all the jumping around on stage, the horrendous volume levels and the often, outright banality of rock and roll, at some levels, depending on the artists and their creativity and convictions, there is a profound spirituality involved.of course, relatively few musicians reach this level. even in the ranks of world class talent it is normal to fall short or to be blissfully oblivious of the higher possibilities of the art. it takes a very rare gift, to be able to see further than the established limits of what is acceptable in pop music. it is relatively easy to detect when a poetic songwriter is working in a spiritual realm - maybe not so simple to understand when a guitarist has broken through to that place. but, some guitar players are capable of breaking the shackles, again and again, and if you resonate with them, you can feel something inside yourself soar. it was that, more than anything, which attracted me to this kind of music when i was a kid, and when James Page was an emerging star.all three of these men have that gift, in their own unique way, and share a vision that there is more to it all than just disposable, popular entertainment. this movie states that theme, rather eloquently.

A rock critic once described the ringing guitar line on U2's most unforgettable song "Pride(in the Name of Love)" as The Edge's "imitation of God". Accompanying Bono's usual bombastic, but heartfelt vocals, "God" humbles man, and stands firm against the latter's fiery petition to release slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King from the kingdom of Heaven. In other words, it's the Edge's song, despite Bono's sterling vocal performance, in which the U2 front-man transforms the famed "Unforgettable Fire(The)" track into an occasion for a seance during Phil Jonoau's documentary "Rattle and Hum", when to a enraptured sold-out audience, he implores, "In the name of Martin Luther King: Sing!" As it turns out, however, there is no God. Through the metaphor of technological wizardry, The Edge unintentionally demonstrates how God is man-made. The Irish ax-man shows us how effects pedals transform ordinary guitar-playing from something pedestrian to something grand. Although this demystifying revelation takes nothing away from The Edge's incendiary riffs on "Pride", his musical voice seems more earthbound, dishonest, as if the chords were on steroids. In revealing his trade secrets, this exceedingly humble man(he performs an acoustic version of "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" that sounds more sincere than Bono's), he messes around with his legend of being among the pantheon of great musicians. According to him, "an effects unit pushes music forward," which dispels the whole notion of a guitar god, since a god needs no improvement. When he says, "That is my voice coming out of the speaker," it's with all the humility of a mortal.Tell a Led Zeppelin fan that there are no gods, and you're liable to start a fistfight. They believe in Jimmy Page. "It Might Be Loud" does nothing to dispel this myth. In front of his English manor, Robert Plant's legendary sidekick tears up the mandolin on an acoustic version of "The Battle of Evermore". A god doesn't have to plug in, but Page doesn't act like a god; he smiles too much, you would think this former wild-man was the Buddha. Inside the music room of his palatial estate, in the film's best scene, Page selects Link Wray's 45 "Rumble" from his collection of vinyl albums and singles for the camera. Of all the people to be playing air-guitar, Page, the former-Yardbird, who along with Jimi Hendrix, rewrote the rules for this once relatively new instrument(which had famously annoyed Bob Dylan fans at the Newport Folk Festival), commands those shriveled but functional fingers through the invisible axe on cue with a look of pleasure across his face that demonstrates the seductive power of good rock and roll. It can even seduce a god. While punk-era Edge, and Jack White as an Upholster(pre-White Stripes), shock us with their youth, as all before-they-were-stars incarnations of famous people usually do, hands down, the best archival footage belongs to Page, impossibly young on a local television program, performing with a skiffle band.Since Jack White is considerably younger than Page and The Edge, and his status an an all-time-great, still an ongoing case being mounted in his favor with each successive album, the filmmaker has fun with this Detroit-born neo-traditionalist by building his myth through scenes that shows White as a mentor for his nine-year-old self, a pale-faced boy dressed in the same black and red ensemble of coat, tie, and hat. In spite of his relative youth, the moviegoer can see that White is instantly relatable to his elders. Unlike most young people, this old soul knows his history. When White joins the two older musicians in a low-key, but nevertheless, rousing version of The Band song "The Weight", he carries his weight with aplomb.