- Upon watching Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap for probably the tenth (or better still, the eleventh) time, I was most impressed at how gently this film treats its fake subjects. There is something intrinsically charming about utterly clueless rock stars who never try -- and yet also never fail -- to give offense. As faux documentary producer Marti DiBergi (Reiner) reads through their litany of negative reviews ("What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn't he have rested on that day too?", the terrifically concise "Shit Sandwich"), the band members rush to defend themselves. "They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry." reads DiBergi. "That's just nitpicking, isn't it?" responds Spinal Tap. Naturally, they can't imagine why the album cover with a woman in a dog collar smelling a glove would be considered sexist.
- The band consists of core members David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and regular players Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) and Viv Savage (David Kaff). St. Hubbins, named after "the patron saint of quality footwear", is a pleasure to work with when his girlfriend Jeanine (June Chadwick) isn't doing her best impression of Yoko Ono. Tufnel, a truly dim bulb, dislikes Jeanine almost as much as he loves playing with St. Hubbins. Smalls is the self-described "lukewarm water" of the group who gets trapped in the stage props, and Savage is the virtuoso keyboardist from every 70's-era rock band. Due to a tragic gardening accident, one instance of choking on someone else's vomit, and multiple cases of spontaneous combustion, the band has no regular drummer.
- The film's best scenes revel in the band's complicated history. Back in the 60's, they were "The Originals", then "The New Originals", and then "The Thamesmen", with bowl cuts and catchy pop songs. As Spinal Tap, they went through a George Harrison phase with "Listen to the Flower People" before veering into a style of hard rock that echoes Deep Purple or Black Sabbath. They put out at least one album of "religious rock psalms," entertained the idea of a rock musical "based on the life of Jack the Ripper," and have no compunction about staging an epic Stonehenge-themed concert that doubtless would have succeeded if the background prop had been built to scale. Their long-suffering manager Ian (Tony Hendra) tries to put out the band's many fires, ranging from constant cancelations to small sandwich bread, but he's about as good a manager as they are a band. These days, Spinal Tap gets second billing to a puppet show and is lucky to play at an Air Force base.
- I could fill the rest of this review with quotes from this groundbreaking and hilarious film, but they have so entered the popular lexicon that even a tour guide at the real Stonehenge described druids by noting that "No one knows who they were or what they were doing." Instead, I'll point out the outsized influence this film has had on comedy over the last few decades. In addition to serving as a clear template for nearly every Christopher Guest film, Spinal Tap's mockumentary style became the organizing principle for many of the funniest television comedies of the new millenium, including The Office, Arrested Development, Parks & Recreation, and Modern Family. For a band that gets lost on its way to the stage and has "a distinguished place in rock history as one of England's loudest bands," that's not too shabby.
- Also featuring Bruno Kirby, Ed Begley Jr., Fran Drescher, Dana Carvey, Billy Crystal, Howard Hesseman, Paul Shaffer, Anjelica Huston, and Fred Willard.
