This Is Spinal Tap is now such a deserved comedy behemoth that it’s easy to forget how gradual its ascent to generally agreed greatness was. Only over the years did so many lines and scenes from a low-key 1984 mockumentary about a heavy-rock band (amps that ‘go to 11’, a tiny Stonehenge, a classically inspired piece called ‘Lick My Love Pump’) become part of our lives.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, by contrast, comes amid a loud fanfare – which may be part of the problem, because the result certainly doesn’t live up to expectations that are inevitably sky-high. Then again, the sad truth is that it mightn’t have lived up to lower ones either.
The premise is that an old contract has emerged obliging the band to perform a final gig, 15 years after they last played – or spoke – together. Back in his role as fictional documentary-maker is the film’s real-life director Rob Reiner, who tracks down the three members to a series of effortfully whacky locales. Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) is running a shop in Berwick-upon-Tweed that sells cheese and guitars. Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) owns Tooting Bec’s Museum of Glue, thereby enabling a sight gag in which he gets stuck to an exhibit. David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) is part of a mariachi band in California where he also composes music for callers on hold.
The three then meet in New Orleans where the gig’s to be held. So what should they give the punters after all these years? It’s a question that duly faces – and ultimately stumps – the movie itself.
Not that it doesn’t try a wide range of possible answers. The most obvious is simply to serve up a collection of greatest hits: quite literally when it comes to the songs and almost literally in the slight variations on jokes from 1984. Another ploy, increasingly popular with musicians these days, is the use of guest stars, leading to mildly funny cameos from Elton John and Paul McCartney – the presence of whom adds to the film’s sporadic resemblance to Peter Jackson’s Get Back, which also featured lots of scenes of a band noodling about (except that there, the noodlers were the Beatles).
Many jokes run for a bit before dropping out to pant at the side of the track
Or how about acknowledging how much the business has changed since Spinal Tap’s glory days? For this one, the film introduces Simon Howler (Chris Addison), who, as the name cunningly suggests is a Cowell/Fuller-style impresario entirely indifferent to music and much given to saying things like ‘in terms of legacy going forward’.
The trouble here, needless to say, is that satirising such corporatism would be old hat even if Cowell and Fuller hadn’t been somewhat superseded themselves. But at least this Howler is better than the movie’s fourth tactic: throwing in more or less anything else in the hope that some of it will stick. Hence the many jokes that run for a bit before dropping out to pant at the side of the track.
Granted, the film has its moments. Amid the longueurs, there are some genuine laughs, and there’s still something touching about the relationship between Tufnel and St. Hubbins, friends since childhood, whose resolutely unspoken love has never quite been destroyed by rock‘n’roll life.
Granted, too, reunions often rely on a fair amount of goodwill to get by – and Spinal Tap has rightly built up plenty of it. So, if you’re determined to enjoy the new iteration, you might find that the sight of these old troupers doing their stuff in their late seventies is enough. But even for the most die-hard fans, I’d suggest, only just.
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