This Is Spinal Tap (Michael McKean, Christopher Guest) 1/2
The mockumentary must surely be one of the least common types of movie. I would surmise that's because it's so hard to do well. One would want to be sure that the end result rises above the subject matter it lampoons, and on that level, This Is Spinal Tap works. Clearly, it is better than the self-serving documentaries that so many rock and rollers have released just so they can make a quick buck.
Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) are three of the members of Spinal Tap (the fourth is the drummer, who is always being replaced because of untimely deaths, such as choking on vomit -- mind you, not his own, someone else's). You know these guys already: David is the stuffy leader, with a blonde at his side; Nigel is the lead guitarist who has all the "big ideas" (and who seems to have a thing for David); Derek is the quiet bass player with an aversion to wearing shirts in general.
The picture has a few, isolated big laughs, and these keep it afloat. In a supposedly explosive concert setting, the frustrated bassist is trapped inside a cocoon and has to be pried out by stagehands. In another hilarious scene, a conceptualization of Stonehenge is brought to the stage with disastrous results. And then there's a sequence late in the movie featuring Fred Willard, where the band plays an airplane hangar and accidentally receives air traffic feedback onstage while in the middle of their inappropriate selection "Sex Farm".
In hindsight, I kind of wish the movie had gone in reverse order, beginning as a chronicle of a down-and-out band who really isn't all that great, then unwittingly getting catapulted to stardom. Beginning with the band at the top and then watching them plummet into obscurity is funny, but not nearly as satirical.
This Is Spinal Tap offers a surprising amount of cameos that are fun to watch for. So many friends of mine have recommended this movie, but for some reason, when I finally saw it, it didn't really translate as the comedy people make it out to be. I still enjoyed it, but found it lacking in... something. Apparently, the recently released DVD offers over an hour of footage that never made it into the original film. Maybe that's what's missing. Or maybe I was just waiting for it to "go to eleven" and it never did.
