Well I've reviewed so many films already and after a while you come stuck for ideas for one, but I couldn't resist finally doing a review on this modern comedy classic, This is Spinal tap which did an immaculate job in taking the piss out of heavy metal bands in this wonderful psuedo rock documentary film. So let's get on the spandex, turn on the guitars, and turn this up to 11.....
So the film is told in a documentary style, or "rockumentary" as the film's director Marty Di Bergi (Rob Reiner) would say it, who follows the fictional British rock band, Spinal tap on their tour of America as they release their new album "Smell the glove". The film is interspersed with one on one interviews as well footage from their previous periods in their career. The band's two founding members, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) started the band back in the 1960s. David and Nigel talk about how over the years how they changed their band's name and even styles of music but they soon ended as a heavy metal band. The other band members include Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) keyboardist Viv Savage (David Kaff) and a series of drummers who have all died in mysterious circumstances. David and Nigel during the interviews prove to be good musicians and decent songwriters but they are also rather immature and not too bright.
As the film progresses the band go on tour but their shows are repeatedly cancelled due to poor ticket sales and there are further issues when the band's new album cover is deemed as being offensive and sexist. And to make matters more complicated, David's girlfriend, Jeanine (June Chadwick) turns up and she starts to try and exert her influence on the band by making suggestions about their stage presentations and costumes. There are also further disgruntlements in the group when their manager Ian Faith (Tony Hendra) reveals the new album cover to be completely black, without the band's consent. As a result of the poor ticket sales and empty shows, Nigel suggests that they do an epic stage production for one of their biggest songs "Stonehenge" for which Nigel draws a Stonehenge megalith on a napkin but he mislables the dimensions (as he labels it as 18 inches instead of feet!). As a result a small prop of the Stonehenge megalith is produced on stage and the band is made a laughing stock. After the performance the band row with Ian and Jeanine offers to co-manage the band with Ian to help out on the creative side, however Ian refuses and quits.
After this things go from bad to worse for the bad as without Ian to promote them, Jeanine is forced to find them smaller and smaller venues and they soon end up playing at an airforce base. During the gig there, Nigel, frustrated at his equipment malfunctioning, throws down his guitar and quits the band. As Nigel was the main songwriter of the band, this leaves them without much material to play, so they result to doing "Jazz Odyssey" their own free form version of Jazz, which isn't well received. On the last day of the tour, Nigel reappears and tells David that Ian has heard that one of their singles from the album, "Sex Farm" is a big hit over in Japan and would he be interested in doing a tour over there, at first David isn't so keen on the idea but he then invites Nigel back on stage during the last gig, caught up in the moment. As a result of this David decides to hire back Ian and they do a very successful sell out tour in Japan.
There have been many attempts at the rock documentary spoof since, but This is Spinal Tap is without a doubt the best one and it set the precedent which has remained unbeaten since. The film was actually only a moderate success on its initial release but over time it has gained a big cult following and has gained much critical acclaim. Spinal tap also perfectly succeeds in taking the piss out of not only big heavy metal bands of the time that took themselves way too seriously but also the nature of the rock documentaries as well. The film's main characters, David and Nigel are both egomaniacs and pretentious yet somehow likeable buffoons who are so wrapped up in their little fantasy world that they can't see past themselves. This is something which is well noted by their manager, Ian Faith, who at one point says to them "you seem to just live in this poncy little adolescent world you have built for yourselves!". The script itself has so many funny lines of which many were ad-libbed by its cast and there was also several hours of recorded film and there is also apparently a four and half hour long bootleg version of the film. And the DVD version also features a number of deleted scenes which add up to the length of the film itself!
Getting onto the performances the cast are all great and the play each part to perfection starting with Michael McKean as David St.Hubbins, the leader, singer and ryhtyhm guitarist of the group who is a bit of a pretentious airhead yet still fairly likeable. The film has it choice of dialogue and McKean certainly get's plenty of good lines in the film, such as the line after Nigel leaves the band, David is drugged up and during his interview with Marti he says "Well I'm sure I would be more upset if I wasn't under such heavy sedation!". And just after the intro scene where the band play their first song of the film David addresses the audience by saying "We are Spinal tap from the UK and you must be the USA!!!". And during their row with Ian after the Stonehenge debacle of their model monument being kicked around by stage dwarves, David berates Ian by saying "I do not think for one second that the problem was that the band was down. I think the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge monument on stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf! That tended to understate the hugeness of the object!". And later on at the end of the scene when Derek asks David if they will do Stonehenge tomorrow David shouts "No we're not gonna fucking do Stonehenge!!". And also in the scene where Ian reveals the all black cover album for Smell the Glove, David is disgusted and says "I mean this is depressing! This isn't something you put on your fucking turntable!". And of course one of my favourites is when Marti asks David about the origins on his surname, St.Hubbins and he says "He was the patron saint of quality footwear".
Which brings me onto Christopher Guest who is hilarious as Nigel Tufnel, David's dimwitted co-founder of the band, yet at the same time he is a pretty good musician. I think it safe to say that Guest get's all the best dialogue in the film and there so many examples and one of the most obvious ones is of course where he plays a poignant piece of music on the piano for Marti, who asks him what its called and Nigel says "Its called lick my love pump!" as well as it being "A sort of Mozart and Bach piece, or a Mach piece". Another hilarious moment that Guest has is when he is backstage and expresses his annoyance over how the bread he has to make sandwiches is too small. And then he goes to moan about the olives, as he says "Look who's in here?" to an empty olive and then he picks up one stuffed with pimento and he says "And in here there's a little guy, look! So its a complete catastrophe!" and Ian insists he shouldn't let it get to him and Nigel says "It won't affect my performance. It does disturb me, but I am a professional so I will rise above it!". And then there is the definitive scene where Nigel gives Marti a tour of his guitar collection and he shows him his customised Marshall amp which "goes up to 11". And when Marti asks Nigel "Well why don't you make 10 a little louder and make that the loudest??" and Nigel looks blankly for a second and then says "These go up to 11". And then there is the scene where they discuss how the band's various drummers have died over the years and how one of them apparently choked on vomit, although they couldn't determine who's vomit it was and Nigel says "You can't dust for vomit". And lastly I will mention what happens to be the film's final scene where Marti asks Nigel what would he do if he wasn't a rock star and Nigel says he could probably work in a shoe store. And Nigel pretends to be a shop worker and Marti asks "Do you think you'd be happy doing that?" and Nigel naively says "Well I don't know... what are the hours???". And I should also add that both McKean and Guest have excellent English accents that if you didn't know they were American you might not have twigged.
Harry Shearer is also great in his role as the band's bass player, Derek Smalls, who is the cool, calm and collected member of the group who attempts to diffuse the tensions between David and Nigel when things get heated. And Shearer has some funny moments of his own of course and in reference to his place in the group he says "They're like two types of distinct visionaires, like fire and ice. And I'm more like lukewarm water". And Shearer also has another funny moment where during one of their live stage performances, David and Nigel emerge from their stage set piece cocoons, but Dereks' doesn't open properly and he ends up have to play the song trapped inside, and he emerges just as the song finishes and David and Nigel re-enter their cocoons, and Derek get's his arm trapped in his cocoon as it closes again! And then there is of course the scene where Derek tries to walk through an airport metal detector machine, and he keeps having to take off metallic items, and the security woman eventually has to use a detector which goes off around his groin area, and Derek undoes his zip and pulls out a large cucumber and drops it on the counter!
Rob Reiner also deserves a mention as he is also great in his role as Marti Di Bergi, the film director (as well as director!) and his opening monologue to the screen sets the film's tone perfectly. And in his opening scene he says "In 1966, I went down to Greenwich village in New York city to a rock club called the Electric Banana. Don't look for it, it isn't there anymore. But that night I heard a band that redefined the word "rock and roll". I remember being knocked out by their exuberance, their raw power, and their punctuality!". Reiner also has another funny moment where he reads some unfavourable reviews of Spinal tap's previous albums over there years, one such review says "I wonder on which day God created Spinal tap and couldn't he have rested on that day too?" and also "Here is a review for your album, Shark sandwich, which is simply a two word review which says "Shit sandwich".
The film also features some fun supporting performances, which include Tony Hendra who is priceless in his role as the band's Australian manager, Ian Faith, who comes across as bit of a control freak who has a rather hot temper and is often scene toting his cricket bat (which he uses in one scene to smash up a table and place against someone's throat). Hendra has plenty of great moments in the film such as in the scene where he unveils the black cover album to the group and he says "I think this is it now! I think its time to kick arse!". And also earlier when Ian talks to the president of Polymer records (Tap's record promoter) who is against the album cover he exclaims quietly from the phone "Fuckin old poofta!" and later he speaks to Bobbi Flekman who tells how offensive the cover of the album is and Ian says "Well you should have seen the cover they wanted to do! It wasn't a glove, believe me!". Another hilarious moment is when Ian meets with the designer who creates the small Stonehenge monument, specified to 18 inches as drawn ineptly on Nigel's napkin, and Ian is outraged at how small it is and the designer says "But the napkin said 18 inches!" and Ian throws down and yells "Forget this! Fuck the napkin!". And later on during the scene where he rows with the band and balks at Jeanine's suggestion to co-manage the band with him and he says "I am not going to co-manage the band with anyone and certainly not with someone who dresses like an Australian's worst nightmare! So fuck you, and fuck all of you! I quit!".
And lastly I will mention Bruno Kirby and Billy Crystal who put in small cameo roles in the film, although the more prominent of the two is Bruno Kirby. And Kirby's scene is great as he plays a limo driver who drives the band while they are in New York and he notices one of the band's girlfriends is reading a Frank Sinatra biography, and they close the limo glass window while he talks to them reciting from the book. And the driver shakes his head and says "Fuckin limeys!" and Marti explains how the band are from a different world than Frank Sinatra and the driver "Yeah I know. But the thing is you don't know life unless you have loved and lived life like Frank has" and he goes on to say of the band "This is passing thing. Its a fad!".
As for the film's music the songs which were all written by the three lead actors in McKean, Guest and Shearer and they are priceless as well as perfect parodies of the kind of cheesy hard rock songs of the time. The songs themselves are pretty catchy and good in their own right, such as "Tonight I'm gonna rock you", "Hell Hole", "Sex Farm". But my favourite has to be "Big Bottom" as the lyrics are just hilarious as the chorus lines are so ridiculous "Big bottom, big bottom! Talk about bumcakes, my girl's got em! Big bottom leave me out of my mind. How can I leave this behind???". Also direction wise Rob Reiner also never puts a foot wrong here either as he perfectly sends up the material that he is supposed to and even he himself contributed to the songs in the film.
As for the film's flaws???? Spinal tap get's so much right that its hard to be picky about it, although perhaps in a way the only problem with Spinal tap is the legacy it left as so many imitators came along to do the rock spoof and they just never came close to this. And after a while I think the actors themselves were probably guilty of milking the parts publicly long after the film was released, even so much so they even appeared in the American heavy metal band, Metallica's black album tour documentary video, where Spinal Tap show up at an event and express their displeasure at Metallica for ripping off their album cover! But I guess that's just nitpicking really.
So that's it for my look at This is Spinal Tap, which after 30 years is still as funny as it was when it was first released and is still always worth a revisit once in a while.
And so I will leave ye there for now.
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