It's possible that no rock 'n' roll movie of the past 25 years has had as profound an impact as 1984's This Is Spinal Tap. The last 10 years alone have seen its formula applied, with generally forgettable results, to hip-hop (CB4, Fear Of A Black Hat), '70s rock (Still Crazy), new wave (The Suburbans), and country (Dill Scallion). Made in 1996 but only recently released on video, Hard Core Logo offers an indie-punk take on the mockumentary-of-a-comeback genre, courtesy of cult filmmaker Bruce McDonald (Highway 61). The film chronicles the ill-fated comeback tour of an over-the-hill Canadian punk band, led by tempestuous vocalist Hugh Dillon, a walking, talking sneer with a bad attitude, a worse haircut, and an ongoing feud with his more ambitious and career-minded lead guitarist (Callum Keith Rennie). The group's leaders are joined in their quixotic quest by obnoxious drummer Bernie Coulson and enigmatic bassist John Pyper-Ferguson, who turns into something of a truth-telling shaman once he loses his medication. Like the bloated Still Crazy, Hard Core Logo generally eschews cheap laughs (or laughs of any kind), instead playing the futility and desperation of the group's thwarted comeback relatively straight. The tactic works fairly well during the many performance scenes, but far less effectively elsewhere, largely because the movie is, like its protagonists, better at conveying emotion and drama through music than through conversation. Ambitious enough to be pretentious, Hard Core Logo intermittently captures the pathos of grown men chasing a dream that will forever elude them, but its conflicts are too familiar, and its characters too underdeveloped, to give the film lasting emotional power. Hard Core Logo's genre and country of origin may differ from those of its predecessors, but the song remains the same.