Josh Reviews Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

The original 1984 This is Spinal Tap has long been one of my favorite films.  I just re-watched it again last week, for the umpteenth time, and I think it still holds up remarkably well as a wonderfully funny and silly piece of filmmaking.  A few of the jokes have aged poorly, but I still think it’s an extremely funny film, with incredibly memorable characters, amazing (and very funny) music, and a number of all-time-great iconic movie moments.  (It was also trend-setting and ahead of its time, inspiring many “mockumentary” style movies and TV shows in the years that followed.)

Stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer have performed together repeatedly over the decades, in films (my favorite being in Mr. Guest’s film A Mighty Wind, in which the threesome played a folk trio) and in various appearances as these Spinal Tap characters.  Yes, they’re all getting on in years, but their various appearances over the years seemed to indicate that they still had a lot of comedic gas in the tank.  When news of a Spinal Tap sequel film was announced, I was excited.  Yes, I know making a four-decades-later sequel is a dicey proposition (very few decades-later movie sequels have ever been any good), but I was on-board.  Then I saw the film’s trailers, and I started to get nervous, because there was very little that I found funny in those trailers.  But maybe, I thought, it was just hard to cut a funny trailer to a movie with this sort of silly improv vibe?

Sadly, having seen Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, I must report that the film is not very good.  It is painful to feel that way, because I love the first film so much, and I still love these characters and these performers.  I really wanted this new film to be good.  But sadly I had more fun watching the DVD menus for the original Spinal Tap than I did watching this new movie.  (Seriously — the menu on the This is Spinal Tap DVD is hilarious — it’s several minutes of audio of the guys, in character, trying to figure out how to work the buttons on the DVD menu.)

And look, this new movie is certainly watchable.  I enjoyed being reunited with these characters and these performers.  It’s a delight to see Mr. Guest, Mr. McKean, and Mr. Shearer back together on screen.  These are three incredible performers, and it is joyful to see them.  It’s also fun to see Rob Reiner back on screen.  (Crazily he doesn’t look that much older than he did back in 1984!!!)  I’ve always enjoyed Mr. Reiner as an actor and on-screen presence.

I thought the film started off strong, with lots of fun silliness as we catch up with the former Spinal Tap band-mates, now separated and living bizarre lives far away from their past personas as popular performing musicians.  But once they got back together, it felt like the film just sort of deflated, and the remaining two-thirds were surprisingly limp, in my opinion.  There’s very little story or drama to be found.  The boys are reunited for a contractual obligation final concert, and they perform the concert.  That’s basically it.  There aren’t really any twists or turns in the story, nor there really any interesting character arcs.  There’s a minor runner about an argument between Nigel and David that broke up the band back in the day… but after a few mentions of that, there’s one scene in which they argue — David accuses Nigel of doing something bad, Nigel says he didn’t do it, and David says, Ok.  That’s it!!  (There is a funny moment in the end-credits in which the secret of what really happened comes out, that I loved.  That should have been a laugh-out-loud button to this storyline; but because the storyline was flat in the movie, the button in the end credits doesn’t have the impact it should have had.)

I know this isn’t a movie that’s going to have deep character development, but I felt the movie strangely didn’t allow us to understand the characters’ points of view on what’s going on.  Are they happy to be performing again together?  Are they resentful towards the “contractual obligation” that necessitated their reunion?  I don’t know!  That’s weird to me.  We meet some new characters, but none of them are given much to do or allowed an actual point of view on what’s happening.  Kerry Godliman plays Hope, the daughter of the band’s manager Ian in the original film (who was played by Tony Hendra, who passed away in 2021), but I didn’t ever really understand if she was good or bad at her job, or how she felt about suddenly becoming a rock and roll band manager, or whether she liked the guys or found their strangeness off-putting.  Chris Addison plays Simon, the concern promoter who I guess is sort of a villain in the film, although here too I didn’t really understand his character or his perspective.  Is he just a jerk or an idiot?  Does he think promoting these old geezers’ band is beneath him?  I have no idea, so he doesn’t really land as a villain because I never knew what he wanted or why he was acting the way he was.  My favorite new character was Valerie Franco as Didi Crockett, the band’s cheerful new drummer.  She had great charisma, but while I thought we’d get some fun comedy from seeing this young woman bouncing off against the three aging Spinal Tap guys, none of that ever really happens.  (We just get one very awkward scene in which Derek tries to proposition her.  Ugh.)  And while there are a lot of jokes about how no one wants to be Spinal Tap’s new drummer (because their eleven previous drummers all met untimely ends — one of the best running gags from the original film), once Didi is hired, that gag disappears.  I thought we’d get a bunch of fun scenes of her ALMOST dying… but we don’t.

The film features some amazing guest stars, including Paul McCartney and Elton John!!  There should have been amazing comedy, seeing these rock & roll gods interacting with the goofy Spinal Tap guys.  But their scenes are shockingly nearly joke free.  It’s fun seeing Elton John perform Stonehenge, for sure!  But there should have been a lot more comedy there.  (We do get a funny bit at the very end of the Stonehenge performance, but it comes after a long 2-3 minutes of the song in which nothing funny happens.  And because I guessed the punchline 10 seconds into the song, the joke doesn’t land as well as it should when it finally arrives three minutes later.)  It’s a delight to see Questlove, Lars Ulrich, Chad Smith, Garth Brooks, and others involved in the film; I wish they had funnier stuff to do.  I was happy to see returning Spinal Tap supporting players Fran Drescher and Paul Shaffer back for this sequel; but again, I wish they had funnier stuff to do.  The only guest star who really lands his appearance is John Michael Higgins, who is hilarious as the fitness expert, Bob Kitness, assigned to get the old guys physically ready to perform on stage again.

We get to hear reprises of most of the classic Spinal Tap songs from the original film, which made me smile, but I was disappointed we didn’t get much new music.

It’s funny; the template of what this movie should have been, in my mind, was a movie I mentioned above: A Mighty Wind.  Not that I wanted them to re-make that movie that already exists, but A Mighty Wind had a similar overall structure (in which estranged musicians must reunite years later for one final concert) and managed to have memorable characters, compelling character arcs, great original music, and lots and lots of funny jokes.  I wish they’d been able to channel more of what worked there for this movie.

Oh well.  I’m glad these guys (Mr. Guest, Mr. McKean, and Mr. Shearer) are all still working.  I was hoping that Rob Reiner, who directed some of my all-tome favorite movies, would be able to pull out another great movie.  (Seriously, back in the day, Rob Reiner had an unbeaten streak of amazing movies: This is Spinal Tap (1984), The Sure Thing (1985), Stand By Me (1986), The Princess Bride (1987), When Harry Met Sally… (1989), Misery (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), The American President (1995).  Wow!!!)  Christopher Guest also became one of my favorite directors (with the amazing 1-2-3 punch of Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind), though he too has sort of vanished as a director in recent years, after 2006’s somewhat disappointing movie For Your Consideration.  (He did return for 2016’s Mascots, a film I’ve actually never seen!  I’ll need to go back and watch that sometime.)  I wish this new collaboration had come out better.  I still have a lot of love for these performers, and for Spinal Tap!

Thanks for reading my blog!  Click here to order my latest comic book: The Tomb of the Broken Amulet, an all-ages Passover mummy adventure!

Please support my website by clicking through one of my Amazon links the next time you need to shop!  As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.  That means I’ll receive a small percentage from ANY product you purchase from Amazon within 24 hours after clicking through.  Thank you!