This Is Spinal Tap – 41st Anniversary (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
Jul 4
3 min read

This is Spinal Tap - The 41st Anniversary

THIS IS SPINAL TAP – 41st ANNIVERSARY (1984)

Featuring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, June Chadwick, Tony Hendra, R.J. Parnell, David Kaff, Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Danny Kortchmar, Fran Drescher, Patrick Macnee, Julie Payne, Dana Carvey, Sandy Helberg, Billy Crystal, Paul Benedict, Howard Hesseman, Russ Kunkel, Paul Shaffer, Anjelica Huston and Fred Willard.

Written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner.

Directed by Rob Reiner.

Distributed by Bleeker Street. 82 minutes. Rated R.

It’s sort of hard to do a movie criticism of a film that is damned near perfect.

It’s shocking to imagine that the funniest movie ever about music is now 41 years old. The film was not only brilliant when it comes to fileting the eternal childhood and absurdity of the music industry, it also created an entirely new form of filmmaking. The idea of a comedy disguised as a fake documentary (don’t call it a mockumentary, that annoys the hell out of co-creator Christopher Guest) was pioneering at the time and is still pretty cutting edge.

In fact, when it originally played theaters in 1984, lots of people thought that it was a legitimate documentary about a mediocre band. Many people still don’t get the joke – in a recent online poll about the most creepy and pedophilic songs in rock and roll history, Spinal Tap’s “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” came in at number one, with most of the people just not getting the fact that it was all a joke.

This Is Spinal Tap was 100% improvised (they filmed hours of footage to come up with the film’s eventual 82-minute run time) done by three (American) comedians playing “England’s loudest band.” Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman), Michael McKean (Better Call Saul) and Harry Shearer (The Simpsons) were all from the music world, beyond their background in comedy and beyond playing the band, they also wrote the music and performed all of the songs of Spinal Tap. (And honestly, it was a pretty good approximation of a real metal band.

This is Spinal Tap was the first feature film directed by Rob Reiner, who at the time was best known as an actor who had played “Meathead” in All in the Family, as well as the son of comedy legend Carl Reiner. Rob Reiner also played the documentary’s director, Marty DiBergi. After This is Spinal Tap, Reiner had an amazing run of great films as a director – The Sure Thing (my favorite film ever…), Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, A Few Good Men and The American President.

Getting a three-day rerelease (July 5-7) to theaters to celebrate the newly remastered version of the film – and to preview the long-awaited upcoming sequel Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, it is a hoot to see This is Spinal Tap on a big screen after decades of seeing it on video. I have seen the film dozens of times over the years, and it never stops being funny.

There are certain movies in which it is inconceivable that they became classic. This is Spinal Tap feels inevitable. So true to life that many musicians have trouble looking at it as a comedy, it is nonetheless laugh out loud funny on a regular basis. This Is Spinal Tap was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Chances are you have seen it over the years – perhaps many times. Still, it is definitely worth the trip to see it on the big screen again, or for the first time.

Jay S. Jacobs