Directed by Rob Reiner.
Starring Michael McKean and Christopher Guest.
In a Nutshell: A heavy-metal band is profiled during their American comeback tour.
The movie that launched the mockumentary genre, stripped away the empty self-importance of rock music and helped make Christopher Guest a cult comedy icon. So does it still go to 11 (sorry, unavoidable), even after the years of endless praise and almost predicable appearances on every comedy laundry list? Oh yes. As technically faultless as Zelig is, This Is Spinal Tap succeeds as a far greater comedy and study of the music industry. Its focus is on Spinal Tap, a fledging heavy metal band that gained their fame for being “one of England’s loudest bands.” The band mates are vacuous and show little grasp of cognition, but the film never ridicules them or forces us to feel disgust. We love them because their pursuit of rock star glory leads them into the black hole of musical careers; malfunctioning stage props, failed signings, Air Force performances and so on. But even as the misfortunes come one after the other, the band members’ optimistic sensibilities remain so that they can still stroke their brittle, attention-craving egos by continuing to reclaim the limelight. It’s never cruel and is respectable towards its targets, which is perhaps the reason why it has sustained such a long shelf life.
The movie that launched the mockumentary genre, stripped away the empty self-importance of rock music and helped make Christopher Guest a cult comedy icon. So does it still go to 11 (sorry, unavoidable), even after the years of endless praise and almost predicable appearances on every comedy laundry list? Oh yes. As technically faultless as Zelig is, This Is Spinal Tap succeeds as a far greater comedy and study of the music industry. Its focus is on Spinal Tap, a fledging heavy metal band that gained their fame for being “one of England’s loudest bands.” The band mates are vacuous and show little grasp of cognition, but the film never ridicules them or forces us to feel disgust. We love them because their pursuit of rock star glory leads them into the black hole of musical careers; malfunctioning stage props, failed signings, Air Force performances and so on. But even as the misfortunes come one after the other, the band members’ optimistic sensibilities remain so that they can still stroke their brittle, attention-craving egos by continuing to reclaim the limelight. It’s never cruel and is respectable towards its targets, which is perhaps the reason why it has sustained such a long shelf life.
The movie manages to push the humor as far as it can go without completely breaking the reality (spontaneous combustion not withstanding), particularly with the music, which sounds generally bad enough to be the real deal. But the movie’s true durability is not just in the comedy but in the way it has made a punchline of every self-important rock band since. Having been embraced by the industry it’s mocking, no longer can any band inflate their egos without the inevitable comparison to Spinal Tap. In the end though, This Is Spinal Tap is a classic. Delusions of grandeur, limited I.Q.’s, fading celebrity, and the music industry’s mechanisms are ripe for satirizing and the film hits every mark. It never settles for gentle laughs, but never seeks to wound. There’s not too much else I can discuss without going to into a retelling of my favorite scenes, but it’s a gem and deserves its legacy.
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