Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
Directed by Rob Reiner
Written by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer and Rob Reiner
Starring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer
Classification PG; 83 minutes
Opens in theatres Sept. 12
Every so often, fiction escapes itself. It resembles everything else on the real-life assembly line – the looks, the feel, the energy. It’s doing more than telling a story; it performs a truth so exacting you could believe what you’re laughing at actually exists.
Rob Reiner’s 1984 comedy This Is Spinal Tap was exactly that: so carefully ridiculous that a generation in the ’80s believed a band could actually be this stupidly incompetent. It practically invented the language of parody – one so many others copied, none quite with its bite.
The sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, has to carry the weight of that revelation. We’ve already seen the fictional band perform live, tour and even chart on the Billboard 200, fumbling their way through the hilariously messy world of rock. Now the film has to rekindle the friction, camaraderie and absurd humanity that once made the cast feel less like actors performing and more like a real band lurching toward immortality, one sensitive gripe at a time.
So it’s a surprise to discover that, despite the bar scraping the ceiling, the sequel mostly succeeds – if you can live with the now-aged, obvious meta tone. The joke’s edges have dulled, but the humour still hits.
A scene from Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.Kyle Kaplan/Sony Pictures
To that end, Reiner mockuments a reunion concert that feels equally ridiculous: David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) as elderly rock stars. What Reiner did in the first film, he does again here: He hovers, listens too closely, treats nonsense with total seriousness. That straight face lifts their bickering into something almost symphonic.
And while the bodies move slower and the jokes land with a little more drag, once the trio start to sing – particularly in rehearsals and, later, that reunion concert – the voices are untouched. The harmonies still glide. For a moment, you could almost believe time hadn’t passed.
Of course, the illusion of youth is just that. The set-up may look like a classic get-together, but it plays out more like a marriage counselling session – the kind of union no one envies but everyone knows; the bickering, half-finished complaints, and sulking when one doesn’t get what they want.
David stews over a particular slight from the original tour, claiming that Nigel – drifting between annoyance and aloofness – knows what he did. Derek stays deadpan in the middle. All of them are older now, their passions rerouted into hold-music jingles, cheese-and-guitar shops and glue museums, but the same obsessions, delusions and comic insistence on their own importance remain here.
The modern music industry doesn’t escape ridicule either. Simon (Chris Addison), a tightly wound concert promoter who can’t process a note, takes the reins with an algorithm-obsessed hand, while Fran Drescher returns as the band’s original publicist. Cameos from Elton John, Questlove and Paul McCartney provide a knowing wink – each a lesson in a legend’s patience for the band.
There’s a kind of procedural nostalgia at work here. It’s not as newborn ridiculous, and certainly not as innovative, but the film knows the game it’s playing – or, in Tap’s case, the music it has to keep hammering out. It doesn’t hit eleven, but it doesn’t have to.
Special to The Globe and Mail
