Davis Guggenheim, born in St. Louis in 1963 while his late father, Charles, was a busy movie maker here, is following nicely in Dad's footsteps. After the extremely successful and well-received "An Inconvenient Truth," about global warming, directed by Guggenheim and starring Al Gore, he turns to music in "It Might Get Loud," and scores again.
He has brought Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White together for conversations and demonstrations of their amazing skills with the guitar and, equally important, for discussions about music, guitars, their lives and their philosophies.
Page, who reached his greatest fame with Led Zeppelin, is shown in some charming clips from his early days as a side man in London, and we see him growing as he moves through several musical groups. White, the leader of White Stripes and a busy performer with his sister, Meg, grew up in Dublin, and The Edge, whose stardom came with Bono and U-2, is from Detroit, so the three very different backgrounds are keys as the conversations wander into various areas but stay mostly guitar-oriented.
Guggenheim did a fine job finding archival footage that includes moments from a variety of rock musicians, and he has put everything together in a most intelligent, enjoyable way.
At the Tivoli
-Joe