ORIGINALLY A DIRECT appeal to body regions – booty, feet, groin – that had been underserved by daily Hit Parade servings of "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?," for a long time rock 'n' roll had no need for cleverness. Indeed, it was supposed to be stoopid. Not until the first generation of teenyboppers weaned on Chuck Berry had gone to college did full-on sarcasm make its first appearance, an occasion you might as well date to the release of the first Fugs LP in 1965.

That set in perpetual motion a legacy of snarkiness extending from Zappa to Sparks to the new wave era, which coughed up more heckling-and-jeckling outfits (Oingo Boingo, Wall of Voodoo, et al) than the prior two decades did in toto. It's easy to overestimate one's wit and easier still for listeners to grow tired of the same after a couple of listens. Thence most bands predicated on smarty-pants humor win as many detractors as they do fans; hardly any make great albums (aside from the greatest-hits one), since perfect singles and one-liners are essentially the same thing – near impossible to create in bulk, most effective in isolation, and in any case usually surrounded by lots of filler.

The semi-exception that proves this rule is They Might Be Giants, the Brooklyn duo of John Flansburgh (glasses, guitarist) and John Linnell (cuter, accordion player, more distinctively nasally vocals). They are possibly the greatest snark-rock combo ever. Their greatest hits (or mostly nonhits, in actual chart terms) might comfortably stretch to two whole discs, with no two fans ever agreeing about track selection. They have made invaluable theme-song contributions to the likes of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Malcolm in the Middle; given the precedent of Urinetown and Bat Boy, isn't it time they started work on an off-Broadway musical?

That said, there is still something fundamental about They Might Be Giants that is, well, shrimpy. It occurs that my favorite "clever" acts – say, XTC, Robyn Hitchcock, etc. – are my favorite clever acts precisely because sometimes (often the best times) they aren't joking at all. TMBG are master musical-genre dilettantes (though you can keep their jazzbo/bebop flirtations), attract bouncy hooks like flypaper does flies, and at least a couple of times per CD are just as funny as they wanna be. Three minutes spent with them will reliably land somewhere between the painless, the amusing, and the nirvanic. For all but the dedicated (of which there are many), however, 30 minutes is pushing it. Longer still is like eating bonbons for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Ergo my mixed feelings about the 102 minutes that make up Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, A.J. Schnack's documentary homage to the band. If you love TMBG and every breath they exhale, you will be in hog heaven here – in good company, too, given the film's lineup of celebrity fans almost too geek-chic perfect to be believed (Dave Eggers, Harry Shearer, Conan O'Brien, Josh Kornbluth, Janeane Garofalo, Jon Stewart). If you just like them, all of this feature's shiny toy-ness will begin to pall after a while, leaving you with a confusing mixture of delight, guilty ingratitude, and hunger for beefsteak.

Schnack does go all out to replicate the band's good-natured pastiche absurdism: There are occasional animated sequences, deadpan recitation of silly lyrics by thespian Michael McKean, snazzy graphics (so new wave!), even a short pseudo-Ken Burns documentary about forgotten president James K. Polk. (He's one among many lesser U.S. historical figures the Giants have portraitized, alongside tunes about deceased Belgian painters, particle theory, palindromes, and polkas.) Genius songs like "Ana Ng," "Don't Let's Start," and "Purple Toupee" are heard, as well as snippets of a zillion others.