THIS IS SPINAL TAP
Reviewed by Harvey Karten MGM Director: Rob Reiner Writer: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean Cast: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Fran Drescher, Billy Crystal, Rob Reiner
When it comes to mockumentaries and comic documentaries, no one can beat Michael Moore--whose "Roger and Me" takes aim at the CEO of General Motors for downsizing his workers and "The Big One," which further exposes corporate greed and political corruption. Perhaps the best known mockumentary of the 1980s, "This is Spinal Tap," has been digitally re-released with an expected September 2000 delivery of a VHS and a DVD with extra minutes of interviews. But extra minutes of interviews and TV appearances are not what this movie needs. It could instead use some pruning, because with its totally improvised script, redundancies, and downright unfunny takes on the rock music industry, some in the audience may feel like taking an epidural to relieve the pain. I am admittedly the guy who is more irritated by the use of that awful speech- filler, "you-know," than anyone else in the world, and this expression is used by every musician in the cast--even by the interviewer who is filming the comic action--more times than I've heard it said in any other film. Considering that 50 hours of celluloid was used to extract its 82 minutes of hardly priceless material, you'd think that director Rob Reiner could have paid his editor a little extra to delete some of these inflaters, but flaws in speech are just one of the problems of a movie that has only intermittent humor going for it.
What does work in Rob Reiner's mockrockumentary is that everything is played straight. No one winks or grins at the inanities and stupidities on display. Instead all characters speak in their own natural ways, oblivious to the vacuousness of their homespun philosophies and analyses of the ensemble's vision. The characters, Christopher Guest as guitarist Nigel Tufnel; Harry Shearer as bass player Derek Small; Michael McKean as lead singer and guitarist David St. Hubbins; David Kaff as keyboardist Viv Savage; and R.J. Parnell as drummer Mick Shrimpton are all musicians in their real lives, giving the film an added feeling of integrity. And since Rob Reiner, in the role of mockumentarian Marty DiBergi, is the production's actual director, the verisimilitude thickens.
The waggery, which is sit-comish, relies on an ever- increasing number of gaffes and misdirections by the rock ensemble known as Spinal Tap, or just Tap, a group which is seen in England just before it is to make a major North American tour beginning in New York--where it receives a rousing reception by the youthful, mostly male audience. Why the lack of women in the following? One of the band explains that their "equipment"--actually cucumbers placed inside their pants at an appropriate location--scares the girls away. In one of the few situation gags that work, bass player Derek Smalls is stopped at the airport check-in booth when despite removing all the metal from his pockets, the bewildered security guard needs to run a portable detector across his body. When the gadget hums at exactly the spot that produces that sound on Tim Allen's body in Harold Ramis's "Galaxy Quest," the offending cucumber, wrapped presumably in tin foil, is removed, and the flight continues.
As the aging group goes on a downward spiral, its audience contracting from the 10,000 that would appear at its apex and is now down to 1,500 at best, arguments break out. Artie Fufkin (Paul Shaffer), is blamed for non-existent promotion while the record company owner, Sir Denis Eton- Hogg (Patrick Macnee), objects to a sexist cover on the album, depicting a greased girl on all fours being led by a man with a leash who extends a glove to her to be smelled. An adolescent gag about one member's dying by choking on vomit (not his own vomit, but since vomit is not dusted, no one knows whose) is followed by yet another wisecrack, allegedly written by music reviewer for a theologically- decorated album cover, "On what day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and could not He have rested on that day too?"
The movie, surprisingly enough, is best when the musicians are allowed to strut their stuff, giving us entertaining music with deliberately banal lyrics. In the movie's most prescient quip, Ian Faith (Tony Hendra), the group's manager, dismisses the idea that the band is losing favor with the masses. "The fans are just becoming more selective," in Faith's view. "This is Spinal Tap" is likely to be picked up by just such a "selective" fan base when it re-appears in theaters on September 1.
Rated R. Running time: 82 minutes. (C) 2000 by Harvey Karten, film_critic@compuserve.com
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews