“It Might Get Loud”

In early 2008, documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim (director of Oscar-winner “An Inconvenient Truth”) set up a meeting of three of the most interesting, innovative, and dissimilar guitarists: Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, The Edge of U2, and Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs. “It Might Get Loud” tells the stories of each guitarist, collecting footage of them as children performing.

The film falters in that many non-musicians and non-aficionados of the guitar will likely to find it inaccessible. The childhood of the three is relatively uneventful, save for their developments as instrumentalists. Another disappointment of the film is that it mostly ignores the premise. The three guitarists were put in a room to discuss music, but well over half the film is biographies, live footage, and other performances by the three individuals, while the actual conversation accounts for surprisingly little.

Each guitarist’s story is interesting in its own way. Jimmy Page visits the house that doubled as the recording studio where Zep recorded their legendary fourth record (the one with “Stairway to Heaven”). The Edge listens to old demos of Joshua Tree, particularly “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Jack White talks about the time as a preteen when he replaced his bed with a Styrofoam pad to make room for the musical instruments.

Viewers who love the guitar, rock music, or specifically any of these three musicians, will find “It Might Get Loud” to be an interesting documentary.