"Hello, Cleveland!" "[Boston] isn't a big college town." "Dubly." "It was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf." "What's wrong with being sexy? Sex-IST." "None more black." And of course, "These go to 11." If you recognize those quotes, then you're obviously clued into - even if you haven't actually seen - the legendary 1984 mockumentary (mock documentary) This Is Spinal Tap. While not the first mockumentary, TIST blew the format wide open paving the way for co-star/co-writer Christopher Guest's mocks like A Mighty Wind, Best In Show, and Waiting For Guffman and even TV series like The Office and Parks & Recreation. The sorely overlooked rap mockumentary Fear of a Black Hat (due to hang-ups in distribution leading to Chris Rock's merely OK CB4 to beat it to theaters and mindshare) rivals TIST for sheer faux verisimilitude.
Co-written and directed by Rob Reiner making his directorial debut, Guest along with co-stars and co-writers Harry Shearer and Michael McKean told the story of faltering rock band Spinal Tap as they attempted to promote their latest album, Smell the Glove. As tensions between guitarists and boyhood friends Nigel Tufnel (Guest in a Jeff Beck shag haircut) and David St. Hubbins (McKean) grow, shows get canceled and venue sizes shrink - or as the band's manager Ian Faith (Tony Hendra) puts it, "Their appeal is becoming more selective." - the band teeters on implosion before pulling it together at the end.
While Spinal Tap in real life put out two subsequent albums in 1992 and 2009 and made occasional festival and charity concert appearances, what fans really wanted was a sequel. Finally, a whopping 41 years later we got Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues and while it's not a bad movie, it's a perfectly adequate and unnecessary stroll through the nostalgia bogs where the Member Berries are grown.
The hook for ST2 is that Ian Faith has died and his daughter, Hope (Kerry Godliman), has inherited his effects including dad's contract with Tap where she discovers the band was obligated to perform one more show. Unfortunately, the band had broken up 15 years previously due to some unknown beef between Nigel and David and the members had gone on to other pursuits. Nigel and his girlfriend are running a cheese and guitar shop; David is doing scores for true crime podcasts and hold music, and bassist Derek Smalls (Shearer) has opened a glue museum.
Reluctantly they reconvene in New Orleans to rehearse for the gig with their keyboardist, Caucasian Jeff (C. J. Vanston, who is the band's real life producer and keyboardist since 1989), while trying to find a drummer who can play and isn't afraid of the band's poor luck with keeping them alive, finally ending up with Didi Crockett (actually pro drummer Valerie Franco).
From there we're treated to an amiable sequence of scenes and schticks plus cameos from real life musicians including Paul McCartney, Questlove, Elton John and a pair of drummers who I shant spoil who turn down the gig while pushing the other with the clear implication that they expect the drummer curse to get the other. Overhanging everything is whatever drove David and Nigel apart and frankly when that thread is paid off, it's not that great or funny a reason.
The actors are now in their late-70s, early-80s and while I've recently seen several concerts with septuagenarian performers like Devo, B-52's, Lene Lovich, Alice Cooper and Rob Halford from Judas Priest who absolutely rocked it, the Tapsters are distractingly aged and the overall energy is on the mild side.
All the callbacks to the first movie and it's soundtrack (with a couple of brief references to songs from their Break Like The Wind album) weigh things down because it's all Member Berries ("You 'member? I 'member.") That McCartney's scene where he points out a weak part of a new song David is working up being followed by David complaining where does SIR PAUL McCARTNEY get off dissing his song and being "toxic" is predictable even when it's mildly amusing. The cameos from Paul Schafer and Fran Drescher (as label reps Artie Fufkin and Bobbie Flekman, respectively) are perfunctory.
The utter ruination of the music business by file sharing then rapacious streaming services like Spotify isn't mentioned nor the rise of K-Pop, artists being signed off Tik Tok, and many other modern issues afflicting those seeking careers in music aren't mined for humor belying the Boomer-centric viewpoints of the creators. Their idea of biting satire is a somewhat toothless addition of Simon Howler (Chris Addison) - a cross between Pop Idol and American Idol creator Simon Fuller and the latter's snarky t-shirt model judge Simon Cowell - as a concert promoter incapable of processing music whose bright idea is for at least one of the band members to die during the show. Har-har, music biz suits are dumb.
I chalk up the general flatness of Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues to age and entitlement. When they made the first one, there were no expectations because the makers were basically nobodies. Reiner was Meathead from All in the Family; Guest was connected to various National Lampoon stage and recording projects; McKean was Lenny on Laverne & Shirley; and Shearer was a featured player on Saturday Night Live.
Post-TIST everyone's career took off with Reiner posting a phenomenal run of all-time classics including Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, A Few Good Men, and Misery before imploding with North, a movie so bad that when i came home from the dollar show and woke my mother up because I needed to talk to someone to process the horror I'd just survived. But that was 1992 and Reiner hasn't made a good movie since (reminds me of how Robert Zemekis was never good after winning Oscars for Forrest Gump) and while advancing to "OK" level is an improvement, it's also a bit of a grasp for past glories.
As for the rest, comfort breeds complacency and the hunger that fueled the original just isn't there. While it's not depressing and cringe seeing these geezers attempt to recapture that Spinal Tap spark, this is a movie fans of the OG will watch once then return to their new Criterion 4Ks of TIST. Half as good, Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues doesn't go to 11, it goes to...
Score: 5.5/10. Catch it on cable/streaming.
And no, I didn't score it that way to make the joke. I just realized 5.5 was half of 11.
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