Legendary faux rockers Spinal Tap, with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer as, respectively, lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel, lead singer David St Hubbins and bassist Derek Smalls, return in a cameo-studded rockusequel – or, if you will, mockusequel – about the band’s contractually enforced and horribly ill-fated one-off reunion gig in New Orleans. It’s their first time playing together since a mysterious reported row between David and Nigel in 2009 brought the Tap bandwagon to a halt.
And to paraphrase the Smiths: that joke is still funny … it’s not too close to home and it’s not too near the bone … but it is close, and you might have to work a little bit harder to remember how you felt the first time you saw the original. There’s lots of good stuff here, some witty reboots and reworkings of gags from the first film and sprightly update appearances from minor, half-forgotten characters currently residing in the “where-are-they-now?” file. (It’s sad not to see Anjelica Huston as Stonehenge designer Polly Deutsch, however.) And the single biggest laugh is a line right at the end about Bruce Springsteen.
What I didn’t anticipate about this film is how very sad it would make me feel. It was normal back in 1984 to call the characters in Spinal Tap “ageing” rockers. Now, well, they really are ageing. We all are. There is a kind of poignancy and melancholy in Tap II that perhaps wasn’t entirely intentional. The amount of perspective is excessive. Yet one thing that also weirdly emerges or re-emerges from this follow-up is the realisation that: yes, the guys playing Tap (and co-writer and director Rob Reiner) really were and are good musicians and their pastiche rock compositions are very effective and accomplished.
The situation now is that the band’s late manager Ian Faith (played by the late Tony Hendra) effectively bequeathed his IP rights in the band to his grownup daughter Hope (Kerry Godliman). She is now legally forcing the band to get back together for a cynical payday, a reunion supposedly lubricated by advice from slippery promoter Simon Howler, played by Chris Addison. Nowadays, Nigel lives in rural England with his young wife (Nina Conti) managing a guitar and cheese shop and playing heavy rock in an Irish folk band at the local pub. Derek runs an antique glue shop (sort of the same jokes as Nigel’s shop), while David is in California, where he composes award-winning incidental music for true-crime podcasts and corporate on-hold messages.
The band are forced back into each other’s company with film-maker Marty DiBergi (Reiner) once again on board – and what grumpy old geezers they are. Helpfully, a couple of real-life rock megalegends also want to get involved with the Tapaissance – about whom the band are amusingly ungrateful. Some of the lines don’t exactly come off: the Simon Howler character is a bit broad and Derek’s attempt to hit on their new female drummer, played by Valerie Franco, is icky. (Nigel himself once asked what’s wrong with being sexy? But this is unsexy in the wrong way.) Nevertheless the Stonehenge-centred finale is a positive Tapocalypse.
• Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is out on 12 September in the UK and US, and on 25 September in Australia.
