This improvised mockumentary from director Rob Reiner was released nationwide in March
of 1984, where it doubled its $2.5 million dollar budget.
The quick 82-minute experience is an excellent send-up of rock culture, portraying the fictional
British heavy metal band "Spinal Tap" during a year on tour with hilarious results.
The R-rated picture perfectly satirizes everything from their wild debauchery, musical pretentiousness,
performance blunders, and general cluelessness.
Perpetually teetering on the edge of realism, it's the extremely subtle and true-to-life
humor that not only makes this movie so funny, it also tricked a fair number of audiences
into believing this band actually existed.
In their first of many such parody-documentaries, veteran comics Christopher Guest, Michael
McKean, and Harry Shearer lead the picture as the titular group of cod-piece wearing
narcissists: ad-libbing a majority of their lines in the process.
In an inspired bit of casting Reiner appears as an ambitious film director within the film,
often interviewing the band on-camera.
Later, he sets up the picture's most iconic moment when he questions Guest's decision
to label all of his amps with an "11", asking, "Why don't you just make ten louder and make
ten be the top number and make that a little louder?"
... the drawn out beat before Chris answers, "These go to eleven" is one of the most legendary
examples of comedic timing.
Joined by some cameos from before-they-famous actors like Bruno Kirby, Billy Crystal, Fran
Drescher, and Ed Begley Jr. - the core group of players make their biting improvisation
and witty banter look effortless, but their heavy accents, and talking over one another
sometimes makes it hard to follow their conversations.
This is one picture that definitely benefits from having the subtitles turned on.
Structurally, the movie could really be arranged in any order...
each scene works well by itself, but when assembled together, there's very little cohesion
or over-arching story here.
The fly-on-the-wall visual style lends credence to the picture's unscripted nature too, consistently
cutting away to Spinal Tap's many shortcomings and humorous issues during their on-stage
performances, like when Shearer gets stuck in a cocoon-like apparatus, forcing him to
wail out his bass-solo in the cramped compartment.
Indeed, the movie is littered with dozens of little gags like this, including the group's
unexplained herpes, difficulties with their overly simplistic album cover, and overtly
misogynistic song lyrics.
When Guest waxes poetic on a romantic ballad he's been arranging influenced by Mozart and
Bach, he then shares that the song's title is "Lick My Love Pump".
Despite the absurd and lewd material, their music is actually rather catchy - and should
appeal to most rock fans.
U2 guitarist, The Edge famously said of the film, "I didn't laugh, I wept.
It was so close to the truth."
And that is perhaps my biggest issue with the movie: there's plenty of great concepts
and jokes, but much like a great "The Onion" article, it often induces more of a soft chuckle
than true laughter.
Still though, as the only movie on IMDb to be rated out of eleven, "This Is Spinal Tap"
is wonderful satire of rock culture worth watching more than once, I thought it was
COOL.
Now let's check out some of your reviews.
Opinions were a bit mixed on this one, but you enjoyed the sharp writing and silly music,
scoring this an EIGHT out of...
"Eleven".
Not quite as strong as remember, I'll score this a COOL myself.