This Is Spinal Tap
The music industry has often been ripe for satire and no form of music has never been more gloriously or stupidly as FUN as that of heavy metal in its pure, unfiltered real life form. From the late 70s through the full decade of the 1980s, the genre represented little more than pure unadulterated good times for a generation of American kids, mostly because its intentions were literally that pure: The music didnât glorify robbing and killing or hustling on the streets, just the recognition that you were young and that having a good time was all that mattered without the heavy shackles of real responsibility. That all being said, for a type of music that centered around the joys of partying and the celebration of freedom, there were certainly some good / great artists working within it and there were also some bad ones as well. While most of the truly bad ones have been forgotten and gobbled up by the dusts of rock n roll history, many have looked to this 1984 fake documentary (alternately known as being both a âmockumentaryâ and a ârockumentaryâ) as being the definitive, one size fits all portrait of what many of those âbadâ bands were really all about. It wasnât exactly original (another âfake rock bandâ called Bad News had a music / comedy show for years in The U.K.) and many have speculated for years just who exactly was the direct real life inspiration for The Spinal Tap band in the movie (some have said that they believe it to be Iron Maiden which is an unfair comparison since Maiden, although never truly mainstream, are actually considered one of the best at what they do and still tour all these years later), but that being said, there is little doubt that Rob Reiner (in his first major directing gig starting off a distinguished career) got all of the major details just right in depicting a completely shallow, self absorbed heavy metal band who are on the road touring in America. So much so, that many real life rockers didnât even find it funny at all, with Steven Tyler stating that watching the movie made him want to throw himself off a cliff and even Ozzy Osbourne confessed that the first time he watched it he didnât quite understand why others around him were laughing because he thought he was watching a real band in a real documentary. Accuracy, yes, but also an innate sense of subtlety in exactly how the humor was presented, so much so that not only was Reiner told repeatedly how people thought that Spinal Tap was a real band that he had documented, but the success and popularity of the movie somehow managed to MAKE them real in our world with cast members Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer (all legitimate musicians who actually wrote and performed all the music) really getting together to perform actual live gigs at events as prestigious as Live Aid and The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert along with still occasionally touring and releasing albums with new original material. The three main actors certainly show plenty of aplomb here, sporting fake British accents (which are still uncanny) and spending much of their screen time chatting with the director Reiner (here calling himself âMarty DiBergiâ and putting himself across as a lovestruck fan who jumped at the opportunity to make a film about his idols) as the story (what it is) documents the bandâs most recent tour across America along with a keyboardist (David Kaff) who appears to be either permanently fried on drugs or possibly even mentally retarded and the latest in their long line of ill fated drummers (R.J. Parnell) who is well aware of the mysterious deaths that have befallen his predecessors and thus is always just a little bit nervous about it. The band is led by its TWO lead guitarists, both of whom consider themselves to be the resident geniuses of the group. Guestâs Nigel Tufnel (arguably the most popular member of the lineup) is a pretentious perfectionist who will find a reason to complain about almost anything and everything and loves to show off his vast guitar collection even as his own patented guitar solos are shrill displays of just how loud a guitar can be made to become. McKeanâs David St. Hubbins (wearing a long blonde mop hair wig) is the preening frontman of the group (or at least the primary singer) who is the first one to start driving a wedge into everything that the group stands for when his girlfriend from back home (June Chadwick) flies out to join them on tour and soon starts throwing her weight around with St. Hubbins passively backing up everything that she says (shades of John and Yoko). Shearerâs Derek Smalls (surprising how such a renowned voice artist like Shearer is barely keeping his British accent prominent) is the most understated of the three, sporting a Lemmy like muttonchop mustache and coming off as being the laid back bassist of the group even as he is clearly caught in the middle between the two feuding male divas that he is working with. There is also Tony Hendra as the long suffering band manager who finds it pretty difficult to deal with everybody on this tour as they find gigs getting canceled and difficulties everywhere they go including a record company that wonât stand for an album cover of a woman in bondage. The various and plentiful cameos that pepper and connect the story include Bruno Kirby as the Frank Sinatra loving limo driver who gets turned off by their pompous attitude (compared to how Frank would have treated him if they had ever met) and confides to Reiner that their music is âjust a passing thingâŚa fadâ, Ed Begley Jr. as one of their old, ill fated drummers seen in a flashback TV clip, Fran Drescher and Patrick MacNee as the record company executives who unload on them about the offensive album cover, Billy Crystal (in an hilarious bit) as the boss of a troupe of mime waiters at a party cussing out one of his own guys (Dana Carvey), Howard Hesseman as the asshole manager of another rock band whom Tap passes by like ships in the night, and Fred Willard as a clueless Air Force Lieutenant who welcomes the band to their gig at a hangar before they clear the room with a rendition of their hit, Sex Farm. All throughout it is amazing to realize that everybody involved literally adlibbed all of their dialogue (with Guest, McKean and Shearer remaining steadfastly in character) and somehow managed to make all of it funny as well which was not an easy task as Reiner reportedly shot countless hours of footage of everybody trying to get their schtick just right and then edited all of that footage down to an 84 minute film where the humor manages to hit much more than it misses with Guest as Tufnelâs âthese go to elevenâ bit becoming the stuff of comedy legend (mostly because that and other Tufnel bits come across as funny due to the character being such an asshole). In fact, the four credited sceenwriters (Reiner, Guest, McKean, and Shearer) filed a motion with The WGA asking that ALL of the actors be credited for the âscreenplayâ, only to be turned down, even as Guest has utilized an almost identical style of directing for his own comedies relying almost solely on the improv skills of his actors to bring the story to life. And what of the music itself? Well, aside from producing one bona fide rock classic (Hell Hole), it is exactly what we should probably expect from such a spoof of this genre, although it must be admitted that the three stars DID come up with some obviously killer riffs and hooks here even if the lyrics are pretty much mindless. Tap is a band always in search of that next wild costume or crazy gimmick or pointless symbolism to keep themselves going in order to stay relevant. Itâs fun rock n roll, yes, but compared to the great immortal masters of the art form (which they so obviously believe themselves to be), thereâs not really much here to savor, but on the other hand itâs in the way that Guest, McKean, and Shearer carry themselves as rock stars on camera to the point that they really seem to believe that theyâre somehow invulnerable is eerie to say the least. But make no mistake. As fun and clever as this movie is, those who put it in the highest tier of movie comedy along with the Monty Python And The Holy Grails and the Blazing Saddles of the world are overrating it hugely, as itâs not so much a direct comedy but rather (as Ozzy believed), a much more subtle, acquired taste, maybe the only example of an elaborate in joke that lasts throughout the entire feature length running timeâŚ
8/10