ADVENTURES OF POWER (Ari Gold, U.S.). 96 minutes. Saturday (June 14), 7 pm, at the Royal Cinema (608 College, 416-534-5252). $10 or free w/ NXNE wristband (see page 62). Rating: NN
Adventures Of Power is a YouTube-sized comedy that hits the bottom of the nerdy-man-child subgenre with a thud.
Part Napoleon Dynamite and part Dodgeball, it was written, directed and stars Ari Gold as a cereal-obsessed small-town social misfit named Power who dreams of becoming a champion air drummer.
It’s a funny premise in a Saturday Night Live sketch kind of way, but it’s not enough to sustain an entire feature. Even Christopher Guest regulars Jane Lynch and Michael McKean can’t get a laugh.
Long stretches depicting Power’s journey to New York for the climactic air drumming championship are torture. Watching people air drum – and unironically air drum at that – just isn’t entertaining.
Why it was skedded as part of NXNE is easy to figure out, though, especially given the final air drumming showdown to Rush’s Tom Sawyer. Rush drummer Neil Peart even makes a cameo.
As for the villain, it’s Entourage’s Adrian Grenier as a dandified country star and real drummer who would rather be an air drummer. It’s the kind of buffoonish non-role that Grenier’s Entourage agent (coincidentally named Ari Gold) would have handed over to Johnny Drama.