Air Guitar Nation (2006)
Docurama

Description

A battle of naked ambition played out on the national and world stage, AIR GUITAR NATION chronicles the birth of the US Air Guitar Championships as legions of aspiring rock stars compete to become the greatest air guitarist in the world. Two would-be rock legends emerge and strum their way towards glory and the coveted national title. Samurai warrior C. Diddy emerges as an early favorite, but his arch nemesis Björn Türoque is not far behind. Will Björn s technical prowess, attitude, and airness be enough to take him to the top, or will C. Diddy conquer all to become America s first supreme being of air guitar?

Tags

2000s, Air guitar

Collected reviews and ratings

9.2 Entertainment Weekly | Owen Gleiberman

The short-and-sweet doc Air Guitar Nation follows two challengers from the first U.S. air-guitar competition in L.A. (it's like American Idol crossed with a Star Trek convention).
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9.2 digitallyobsessed.com | Rich Rosell

You can't stop rock and roll, even if you don't have an instrument. Highly recommended.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

Because it's different, uninhibited, energetic, and most importantly incredibly funny, a film that completely draws you into itself for a few hours... but then the films over and you wish it would have gone on forever.
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8.0 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

In some mysterious way, the level of self-awareness behind the braggadocio of air guitar made me care more, not less, about the bitter and finally respectful competition between these two air-maestros.
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8.0 BBC | Catherine Chambers

Anything as bizarre as a fad involving imaginary instruments is bound to throw up a few interesting characters, and there's no shortage of them in Air Guitar Nation.
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7.5 TV Guide | Maitland McDonagh

Ordinary moviegoers would never know that air-guitar competitors must craft a series of one-minute routines, some to songs they've only just heard, or that their efforts are judged on the 4.0 to 6.0 scale used to rank competitive figure skaters. Important to know? No. Fascinating? Absolutely.
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7.4 DVD Verdict | Brendan Babish

Are these air guitar proponents putting Lipsitz (and her audience) on when they speak about the activity with such grandiloquence? If they are, that's fine, but the point should have been made more explicitly. If these people are sincere, and they really envision air guitar as a pure art form, then I just don't get it.
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7.0 New York Times | Matt Zoller Seitz

Like "Spellbound," "Murderball" and other competition documentaries, it's a valentine to underdog dreamers: "Rocky" gone basic cable. But the movie's wild performances and droll humor are tough to resist.
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7.0 Variety | Ronnie Scheib

Lipsitz's docu trips along with a straight-ahead, brisk tone that validates this seemingly nutty activity -- "airness," as it turns out, involves not simple imitation like lip-synching, but mastering a mystical, abstract that transcends simulation.
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7.0 DVD Talk | Jamie S. Rich

Air Guitar Nation is that rarest of documentaries--completely out of left field, totally crowd pleasing, and strangely heartwarming.
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6.3 Rolling Stone | Peter Travers

Documentarian Alexandra Lipsitz believes that air-guitar competitions are worth a whole feature-length movie. She's wrong, of course. But the fun lasts longer than you might think.
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