Get Ready to Be Boyzvoiced

Get Ready to Be Boyzvoiced

For all the mockumentaries that get stuck with 'The next Spinal Tap !!!' tag it is Norwegian film Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced that perhaps comes the closest to actually deserving it. Actually, both Tap and Boyzvoice would easily be in my all-time most bestest comedies. Yup, it's that funny.

Switching metal-heads for a boy-band, (as ripe for the parody as the heavy metal scene was in the eighties) Boyzvoice targets not only all the bland boy-bands out there, but also pokes fun at all the typical European pop-band trying to globalise their music and themselves for American consumption by singing in English, something we've seen from Abba to Ace of Base, and also Roxette (although Roxette are perhaps the worst culprits of bizarre English lyrics where something must have been lost in the translation - “ Heavenly Bound cuz Heaven's Got A Number/When She's Spinning Me Around Kissing is a Colour/Her Loving is a Wild Dog/She's Got The Look ” - it should be noted that Roxette fucking rule and should never, ever again be grouped with those two other acts under any circumstances).

Even if you're one of those evil anti-subtitle folk and you don't find the antics of Boyzvoice band members M'Pete, Roar and Hot-tub hilarious, you would be have to be void of an elbow (or whatever the funny bone actually is) not to piss yourself at some of their songs and lyrics. Take this example:

Hey there, beautiful girl,
You oughta know you rock my world,
With your eyes,
And those perfect thighs,
You make me feel so happy when you smile

You make me want to scream and shout,
I'd really like to ask you out,
But...
You're my cousin,

(cousin, yeah yeah yeah)
Second daughter of my fathers sister;
Anne Marite
You're my cousin,

(cousin, yeah yeah yeah)
We could never be a couple, even if we wanted,
Sweet cousin, hey hey hey,
Just because we have similar DNA.

If you're not laughing, imagine it with a Norwegian accent. There you go. Works every time.

The songs themselves are actually toe-tappingly good, and fucking spot-on as genre riffs. There are James Bond theme songs, clever parodies of Euro-pop electro-trash (Aqua's Barbie Girl is spoofed as We Are the Playmo-men ; a brand like lego and duplo), Ricki Martin-style Latino anthems, ( Quanta Costa Cervesa) , and of course, the boy-band ballads (the lead singer's girlfriend, who he thought was sixteen, turns out to be a Twelve-Year Old Woman , so naturally he pours his heart out into a song about it). Like Tap , they weren't going to be confined to the silver screen, and went on to release a proper album of tunes in their native country, and I'm assuming those crazy Norwegians lapped it up.

Where Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced actually surpasses Spinal Tap – and hold off on the crucifixion until you hear me out - is by presenting a parody of the hardcore fan, something Tap all but ignored. The actor playing Boyzvoice's biggest fan Ove, who is doing a school assignment on the band, is co-director and writer Espen Eckbo, who also plays the main singer in Boyzvoice, among other characters. While Eckbo is amazingly hysterical in his many roles, he is especially so as the possibly-retarded pubescent fan, and if these guys aren't the Norwegian equivalent to our own D-Gen/Micallef comedy community, or America's Saturday Night Live institution (that spawned the Tap geniuses), I'd be very surprised.