Tenacious D in: The Pick of Destiny

Two wannabe rockers (Jack Black and Kyle Gass) set out on a quest for a legendary guitar pick made from the tooth of Satan. If you’re already in on the Tenacious D joke—the self-styled “greatest band on earth” formed by Black and Gass in 1994—then you’ll be on board with the movie’s humor. If not, you may wonder who would pay good money for a vanity home movie shot by Black, Gass and their pals in their spare time between real jobs. (The pals include director Liam Lynch, who co-wrote with Black and Gass, and actors Tim Robbins, Amy Poehler, Meat Loaf and Ben Stiller, who play larky cameos.) The movie is the film equivalent of Tenacious D’s music: They strain and contort to make both music and comedy that are perfectly ordinary, while we’re expected to respond to the effort rather than the result.