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For music biz insiders, This Is Spinal Tap is a vastly amusing satire of heavy metal bands.
For all its japes and jokes, the movie is really about exhaustion of the spirit: sitting in a bleak hotel suite at 4 a.m. with the bad taste of last night in the mouth and the feeling that tomorrow will not be a better day.
The material is consistently clever and funny, though ultimately the attitudes are too narrow to nourish a feature-length film.
It stays so wickedly close to the subject that it is very nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.
The film is a composite of classic moments, all of which we sense could have happened to any of the classic heavy metal bands -- or at least to those whose members combined delusions of greatness with low I.Q.s.
This Is Spinal Tap doesn't pull punches...
[VIDEO] Although examples of the mockumentary genre existed before "Spinal Tap" this heavy metal comedy is considered an epitome of cinematic satire.
If you didn't know this was a fake film, you could easily believe it's real.
...a sporadically amusing but all-too-uneven piece of work...
Hilarious, ribald, drug-filled rock send-up.
The original suffers upon review simply because its novelty has worn off. But being the first mainstream feature of its kind, it deserves due reverence.
The story of an embarrasingly inept heavy-metal band called Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner's film set the mockumentary standard that has come to define much of modern screen comedy. [Blu-ray]
Scores an 11 (out of 10) for sheer inspired lunacy but it's the writers' unexpected fondness for their subject matter that puts the film in a class all its own.
Hilarious, bitingly perceptive and cinematically assured.
Mildly funny, not a whole lot better than the best Christopher Guest mockumentary I'd seen before this, 'Best in Show.'
There had been countless documentary spoofs before This Is Spinal Tap, but this inspired put-on was the first to actually capture the texture and style of real documentary.
Hilarious pseudo-documentary spoof of a British rock group that was so on-target in its satire, many viewers took it for the real thing.
This superb satire became the standard against which all mockumentaries are evaluated. The film was so successful that the fictitious group reunited for a series of live concerts and a TV special, further blurring the line between real and reel.
The satire is ever so refreshingly played straight, is seemingly benign and dead-on funny.
Reiner's brilliantly inventive script and smart visuals avoid all the obvious pitfalls, making this one of the funniest ever films about the music business.
A towering achievement in cinema, music, and life art. Funnier and more prescient every time I see it. Any time they tour I will be there.
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