Air Guitar Nation: Long Live C-Diddy!

Air Guitar Nation is a 2006 documentary about the 2003 Air Guitar Championships in Finland. Uh, yeah. I discovered this one whilst browsing Netflix and the absurdity and stupidity of its premise intrigued me. I mean, what the hell is wrong with people that watching someone fake play an instrument is considered a legit form of entertainment?! Thus I got suckered into watching the movie just to see for myself what was going on.

And you know what? After watching the movie I totally get it. The air guitar competitions in the film are hardly serious events, but could more accurately be described as comedy routines that mix together elements of dance and acting. The people who get far in the competitions know how to work the crowds by creating recognizable and absurd stage personas.

The film mainly follows two American air guitarists in their attempts to best the competition and make it to the championships in Finland. These two champs are Björn Türoque and C-Diddy (yeah, stage names are part of the whole "recognizable and absurd stage personas" thing that I described earlier). Björn Türoque, despite his awesome stage name, had a dry, ironic hipster sensibility that wore on my nerves as the film progressed. C-Diddy, however, utilized a goofier and more outlandish style in competitions. His trademark was wearing a Hello Kitty backpack in place of a shirt...how is that not awesome?! To be fair though, C-Diddy had also gone to college for acting and described himself as a professional actor/comedian so he definitely had an advantage over the other competitors in that he was experienced in performing in front of people.

C-Diddy was also one of the few characters in the film whose background is fleshed out. We get to meet his conservative Korean parents, who admit that they would have preferred their son become a doctor or lawyer rather than an actor. Including this family stuff in the film helped to give a bit of depth and heart to what would otherwise be a funny, but shallow experience. Don't get me wrong, this film is still in no way emotionally deep or insightful, but giving the viewer some background info on the characters makes them seem more like three-dimensional people rather than simply cartoonish stage characters.

While I could've done with more characterization, I liked that this movie mostly stayed away from drawing profound insights from the competition. After all, it's a movie about people flailing away on a stage whilst wearing brightly colored costumes. The film, and the air guitar competitions themselves, seem to be the opposite of intellectual experiences. Instead they seemed to be celebrations of pure emotion and silliness. To be fair, 80-some minutes of pure silliness can get a bit wearing, but I'd be lying if I didn't say there were moments of this movie that I loved. So while I'm not going to recommend that you drop everything to see Air Guitar Nation, it's not a bad way to kill some time by any means.