Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King

The first thing to remember when viewing this difficult-to-believe documentary is that there really is an underground band called Half Japanese and that the stories being told about their eighteen year musical career are, for the most part true. That being said, it is almost impossible to distinguish this evidently sincere documentary from the earlier (and entirely fictional) This Is Spinal Tap, which idolizes a similarly inept and clueless group of musicians and fans. Penn Jillette (of the gore-and-magic duo Penn and Teller, acknowledges that he is such a fan of the group that he took over as their producer. It is possible that the very naivete which this film captures is the source of the group's popularity - surfacing, as it did, in the lush, overcomplex and overproduced pop music scene of the late seventies.