For reasons unknown, or perhaps late-stage capitalism, there seems to be a thing about doing these decades-later sequels, so why not do one for This Is Spinal Tap? It’s the prototype for the rock mockumentary, with the not-particularly-bright members of the British heavy metal band Spinal Tap having a hapless tour as director Rob Reiner plays fictional documentation Marti Dibergi who is chronicling the whole thing. It’s a classic comedy for a good reason.
Did there need to be a sequel? Well, Reiner, and the three main Spinal Tap members of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer are all back with a reunion movie. Was it worth the wait?
It’s been a little over forty years since Marti DiBergi’s documentary This Is Spinal Tap came out. The band continued to do their thing for a while, but at some point, they broke up when childhood friends Nigel Tufnel (Guest) and David St. Hubbins (McKean) had a falling out for reasons no one knows, including Nigel. Since then, Nigel has opened a cheese and guitar shop in England, David writes music for podcasts and for “on hold” lines, and bassist Derek Smalls (Shearer) is running a museum for glue. The band’s manager has since died, but his daughter Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman) has them under contract for exactly one performance, and so Marti tracks the trio down as they come together again after many years for a show in New Orleans.
That’s basically the plot here. The band may not be on tour, and Nigel is absolutely perplexed why David is so angry at him. The story does check in with a few of the characters from the original movie whose actors are still alive as well as a number of other eccentric types that seem to be drawn to Spinal Tap because, well, these are the type of people who end up working with Spinal Tap. They need a new drummer and get a young, health-conscious one (Valerie Franco) given the band’s history, their manager Simon (Chris Addison) knows literally nothing about music, and all the while David is sniping at Nigel even as the occasional celebrity guest star comes by to visit. Will the guys get their reunion right?
While I will admit that it has been a number of years since I have seen the original Spinal Tap, the movie is a classic for a reason. Is there a compelling reason to revisit these characters? Not really. Everyone involved is visibly older (it has been a bit over forty years), but the story is set entirely within a single city and not on some kind of tour where everything possible can go wrong. I don’t know that I would say it is trying to, say, recreate classic bits, but the central trio are as clueless as ever, and David’s constant sniping at Nigel is a bit of a mystery for the longest time in a movie that runs under 90 minutes. The end result is, for lack of a better term, harmless. I don’t see any reason for this movie to exist, but at the same time, it’s not like I am offended that it existed either.
I wouldn’t even say it was entirely without entertainment value. I had a few chuckles, and the only other person at my nearly-empty screening had a couple loud laughs of his own. The drummer audition was probably my favorite moment, there’s a nice bit involving a ghost tour, and the extra interviews during the end credits were rather amusing. That said, maybe I’m not the biggest Spinal Tap fan, but there wasn’t anything on par with “this goes up to eleven” since this sequel doesn’t go that high in the end.
Grade: C
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