Average Rating: 8.6/10
Reviews Counted: 57
Fresh: 54 | Rotten: 3
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 7.7/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 116,255
Largely improvised by director Rob Reiner and his cast, This Is Spinal Tap looks and sounds like a "real" documentary, with Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, and Christopher Guest as David St. Hubbins, Derek Smalls, and Nigel Tufnel, the key members of a going-nowhere British heavy metal band called Spinal Tap. The "group" started as an informal skiffle band, eventually maturing into an R&B act called the Thamesmen (their hit was "Gimme Some Money"). After going through a psychedelic period with
Mar 2, 1984 Wide
Jul 14, 1998
MGM
All Critics (58) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (58) | Rotten (3) | DVD (23)
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.
This fake documentary about the somewhat catastrophic tour of an 80s hair metal band is done so well that it was certainly taken at face value when it came out. The interviews, bits and pieces from the hotel rooms, back stage and the tour bus feel so random, bizarre, yet oddly realistic. While nothing outrageously
June 14, 2006Super Reviewer
This Is Spinal Tap is possibly the best mockumentary and rockumentary ever! If you haven't heard of this film, read this review and then go out and watch it! I managed to pick up a new copy of the 3-Disc Edition from Sainsbury's for £3! This Is Spinal Tap tells the outlandishly hilarious story of the legendary band
October 23, 2011
Super Reviewer
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