This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

All Critics (61) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (57) | Rotten (3) | DVD (23)

For music biz insiders, This Is Spinal Tap is a vastly amusing satire of heavy metal bands.

March 26, 2009 Full Review

Variety Staff

Variety

Top Critic

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.

August 19, 2008 Full Review

Richard Corliss

TIME Magazine

Top Critic

The material is consistently clever and funny, though ultimately the attitudes are too narrow to nourish a feature-length film.

December 17, 2007 Full Review | Comments (16)

Dave Kehr

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

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.

February 9, 2006 Full Review

Geoff Andrew

Time Out

Top Critic

It stays so wickedly close to the subject that it is very nearly indistinguishable from the real thing.

May 20, 2003 Full Review

Janet Maslin

New York Times

Top Critic

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.

August 15, 2002 Full Review

James Berardinelli

ReelViews

Top Critic

Consistently funny, with sheer brilliant turns from every performer on the cast...

January 19, 2013 Full Review

Felix Vasquez Jr.

Cinema Crazed

Returning to Spinal Tap always brings with it a pronounced sense of discovery, a freshness that is uncommon with movies generally and unspeakably rare in a comedy.

June 18, 2012 Full Review

Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

[VIDEO] Although examples of the mockumentary genre existed before "Spinal Tap" this heavy metal comedy is considered an epitome of cinematic satire.

April 14, 2011 Full Review

Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.com

If you didn't know this was a fake film, you could easily believe it's real.

March 2, 2011 Full Review

Kevin Carr

7M Pictures

...a sporadically amusing but all-too-uneven piece of work...

February 13, 2011 Full Review | Comments (4)

David Nusair

Reel Film Reviews

Hilarious, ribald, drug-filled rock send-up.

January 1, 2011 Full Review

Afsheen Nomai

Common Sense Media

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.

June 30, 2010 Full Review

Jordan Hiller

Bangitout.com

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]

July 28, 2009 Full Review

Peter Canavese

Groucho Reviews

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.

October 18, 2008 Full Review

David N. Butterworth

rec.arts.movies.reviews

Hilarious, bitingly perceptive and cinematically assured.

August 19, 2008 Full Review

Film4

Mildly funny, not a whole lot better than the best Christopher Guest mockumentary I'd seen before this, 'Best in Show.'

April 16, 2008 Full Review

Robert Roten

Laramie Movie Scope

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.

March 20, 2008 Full Review

Sean Axmaker

Seanax.com

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.

December 17, 2007 Full Review

TV Guide's Movie Guide

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.

October 22, 2006 Full Review

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

The satire is ever so refreshingly played straight, is seemingly benign and dead-on funny.

June 3, 2006 Full Review

Dennis Schwartz

Ozus' World Movie Reviews

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.

December 6, 2005 Full Review

Brad Laidman

Film Threat

• 1. Marty DiBergi: Do you feel that playing rock and roll music keeps you a child... that is, keeps you in a state of arrested development?
  2. Derek Smalls: No, no, no. I feel it's like, it's more like going, going to a national park or something, and there's... you know, they preserve the moose. And that's my childhood up there on stage is that moose, you know.
  3. Marty DiBergi: So when you're playing, you feel like a preserved moose onstage?
  4. Derek Smalls: Yeah.
  – Submitted by Taylor P (10 months ago)
• 1. David St. Hubbins: I think that the problem may have been that there was a Stonehenge monument on the stage that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf. That tended to understate the hugeness of the object.
  – Submitted by Leia B (18 months ago)
• 1. Morty the Mime: Mime is money.
  – Submitted by Daidoji Z (21 months ago)
• 1. Nigel Tufnel: These go to eleven.
  – Submitted by Chris P (2 years ago)

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