Spinal Tap II: The End Continues tries hard to recapture the satirical glory of the first Spinal Tap movie from 40 years ago. It’s a tall order, and one that it falls short of achieving, even as it reflects lightly on the inescapable reality of death. Language and a bit of suggestive material earn this sequel an R-rating.
It’s been 40 years since Rob Reiner put on his director’s hat—both literally and fictionally—as the character Marty DiBergi in the groundbreaking 1984 “mockumentary” This Is Spinal Tap. In that role, he captured the exploits of an aging British rock group’s seeming last gasp on popular culture’s fickle stage, satirizing just about every rock ‘n’ roll cliché you could think of along the way.
I suspect there’s no way Reiner and Co. could possibly have known the extent to which Spinal Tap’s ridiculous exploits would be woven into the fabric of the rock canon in the decades that followed. Could comedic actors Michael McKean (who plays guitarist and singer David St. Hubbins), Christopher Guest (guitarist Nigel Tufnel) and Harry Shearer (bassist Derek Smalls) have known that their onscreen performances would lead to actual albums and real-world concerts in character, blurring the line between fiction and reality, in the years that followed? I doubt it.
And now they’re back, reprising their iconic roles as they prepare for a reunion concert in New Orleans, 15 years after their last show. Once again, Marty DiBergi gets to work crafting another Behind the Music-style documentary to capture what may well be the band’s last hurrah. At least, theoretically. Because let’s face it, they all look like Old Testament characters, and I’m reasonably certain there ain’t gonnna be a Spinal Tap 3 in 40 more years.
This time around, plenty of real-world musicians make cameos (playing as themselves) along the way, including Paul McCartney and Elton John. And given Spinal Tap’s illustriously tragic history of losing drummers in strange ways, it’s no surprise that drummers Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers) Lars Ulrich (Metallica) and Questlove all politely decline the opportunity to join the band for one last show.
No one will mistake this sequel as a message movie. That said, there is—as there was with This Is Spinal Tap—a sweet relational core here. Once again, it revolves around the fluctuating relational distance between David St. Hubbins and Nigel Tufnel.
As the movie opens, David and Nigel haven’t seen each other in more than a decade. Their attempt at reconnection is awkward at first, but they settle into a familiar collaborative rhythm as they make new music and practice the old hits together. David says, “I think the more we retreat into the music, the more we yield to the cowardice we feel about confronting one another with things, the nicer things become.”
Still, longstanding tensions simmer. David eventually accuses Nigel of having slept with his wife many years before, which Nigel vehemently denies. It appears that they’re drifting apart again before David sees two other street musicians playing together and remembers the decades of musical connection he and Nigel have.
Before their performance, David smiles and tells Nigel, “Whatever you did, I forgive you.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Nigel says in response.
“Well, then, I forgive you for that.”
It’s not a particularly profound scene, but it reminds us that maintaining relationship with anyone for the long haul requires patience, courage and a willingness to forgive.
New characters have positive moments as well. The band is now being managed by former manager Ian Faith’s middle-aged daughter, Hope. (Yes, her name is Hope Faith.) She initially feels pretty cynical about the contract for the reunion show that she inherited. But as they move forward toward that gig, she increasingly gets on board and works to help the band succeed.
After being rejected by a bunch of celebrity drummers (due to the fact that 11 previous drummers for the band have died horrible deaths), the band auditions and recruits a much-younger female drummer named Didi who’s earnestly upbeat and positively over the moon to work with the band.
Though much of the spiritual content in Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues is treated as a punchline, the movie contains quite a bit of it.
We learn that David and his girlfriend from the first movie, Jeanine, apparently married and divorced. “I just hope she’s found the right man,” David says sincerely. The camera immediately cuts to Jeanine in a nun’s habit and her new name flashes on the screen: “Sister Jeanine Immaculata.”
“I didn’t tell him about Jesus,” Jeanine explains apologetically. “I didn’t want him to be jealous or anything.” She goes on to talk about hearing, she thinks, God’s voice telling her, “Every breath you take, every move you make, I’ll be watching you”—which Marty then tells her is the chorus of a Police song.
We hear a reference to a “Hell Toupee,” and we see an image of Satan wearing a wig. (Nearby words read, “When it goes, old Satan knows, that there’s hell to pay.”) Derek is the owner of a “glue museum,” and a book that we see there is titled, Words With Glue on God: Time to Reinvent Those Tacky Prayers. A song called “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare” includes these lyrics: “Having a rock ‘n’ roll nightmare/The devil’s gonna make me eat my drums.” Another song “Hell Hole,” uses that phrase repeatedly. And “Stonehenge” references druidic spirituality, just as that song did in the first film.
The band rehearses and records in a supposedly haunted house in New Orleans. We repeatedly see a social-media ghost chaser and his retinue trundling through the house holding ghost-detection technology up in the air. Later we hear that the spirits of Fats Domino and Louis Armstrong allegedly haunt the house.
The band’s former studio representative, Bobbi Flekman, says that promoting the band’s album Smell the Glove in the 1980s “was so painful for me I became a Buddhist.”
As happened in the previous movie, the band’s concert is announced with the words, “Live, direct from hell, Spinal Tap!” There’s also an earnest exclamation of “Thank God!”
One woman wears a plunging top that displays a lot of cleavage. Didi wears very tight tank tops. At one point, Derek suggestively propositions her, never mind the 40-year or so age gap between them. Didi laughingly says she’s flattered, just as her girlfriend, Annie, shows up (wearing a midriff-baring tank top).
Song lyrics include what we might describe as adolescent musings about sex. Paul McCartney, of all people, comes to visit the band in the studio, saying of their song “Big Bottom,” “The lyrics … it’s almost educational. Anyone who can write about a ‘flesh tuxedo’ and a ‘pink torpedo,’ that’s literature, really.” We see a viral social media video clip of Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood singing those lines from “Big Bottom” as well.
We hear a bit from a new double-entendre-laden song called “B–ch School,” blending canine imagery with some suggestive lyrics.
Someone makes a confession about having cheated with another man’s wife. Nigel’s current girlfriend, a woman named Moira, talks about taking her clothes off after meeting him.
A male trainer hired to help the band get in shape for the upcoming show asks the guys, “Does anyone have any penis pain?” A large plastic skull onstage rotates around to become a large, bare female backside during the song “Big Bottom.” We hear a veiled allusion to masturbation.
We see a flashback to the band’s (now deceased) former manager Ian Faith destroying a TV with a cricket bat in a hotel room (in a clip from the first film). A ridiculous accident onstage tips its hat to the original film, putting all but one of the band members, plus a famous surprise guest, in the hospital. Said guest has two broken legs and has two huge casts on them.
A character chokes in the end credits, and it’s unclear whether that character lives or not.
Derek’s glue museum includes a vintage box with a picture of a horse and the words, “Should horses be in glue? They say neigh!!!”
At the beginning of the film, David is running a studio in California, doing all manner of random musical scores, including one for a true-crime podcast. “People love murders!” Marty exclaims while interviewing him. David also says he’s doing the soundtrack for a horror movie about elderly zombies called Night of the Assisted-Living Dead.
One of the band’s promoters, a newcomer named Simon Howler, suggests that securing the band’s legacy could be accomplished in a novel manner: “The simplest, most effective way that we could do that is if during the gig, at least one, but ideally no more than two of you were to die. That’s what I call the ‘Elvis Effect.’”
“You mean pretend die?” Nigel asks.
“I think that would actually complicate matters. It’s easier if you just … expire.”
“Would you settle for a coma?” one of the other guys chimes in shortly thereafter.
And that leads into yet another story about yet another drummer dying, this time a guy who was deathly allergic to the seeds that were, unbeknownst to him, in a new pair of maracas he was playing. And when Marty asks new drummer Didi about previous drummers who’ve perished, she says, “Rock ‘n’ roll is about living for today and leaving dying for another day.”
We hear again about drummer “Stumpy” Joe, who choked to death on corn in someone else’s vomit. Nigel’s girlfriend back in England, Moira, repeatedly calls to tell him that someone has died.
In another scene, a noted rock photographer takes the band to a cemetery for publicity pictures. Nigel observes, “It feels like you’ve brought us to a place where the dead people are, but we’re not dead yet.” Derek writes and plays a demo of a song about death with the lyrics, “Here’s my promise after I burn/I’m gonna be rockin’ in the earth,” and, “One thing I know about the great hereafter/I’ll still be blitzing eardrums from the highest rafter.” David and Nigel agree that it’s a “deep and profound” song with “great promise.”
A catered meal involves an entire cooked alligator, presented in its entirety on a platter for the guys (who aren’t all that excited about eating it).
We hear about a dozen f-words, several of which are used in a crude sexual context, and three s-words. God’s name is misused once, as is Jesus’ name. There are three instances of the British crudity “w-nker.” We hear one or two uses each of “h—,” “b–ch,” “bloody” and “screw it.” And as previously mentioned, there are multiple additional uses of “hell” describing the place, not using it as a profanity.
We hear a passing reference to drugs in a generic sense. Before the band reunites, we learn that Derek has a glue museum, featuring glues from around the world. It’s not a shocker when he takes a couple long whiffs of one vintage glue and seems to enjoy the experience so much that the container gets lodged in his nose. We also see a sign for a store that sells cheese and cigars.
David likely references some kind of chemical excess when he talks about the bad experience of “waking up in a public library having passed out and sh-t yourself.”
The bare backside prop mentioned above expels a large amount of visible, fog-like gas, complete with a long flatulence sound, at the end of the song “Big Bottom.”
Simon Fowler, who’s treated the band very poorly at times, announces that he needs to go be with his “birth mother,” who is dying. David quips sarcastically, “Is your birth mother a shark as well” (one of the truly funny moments in the script.)
Having grown up in the ‘80s, I’ll confess that This Is Spinal Tap was an oft-watched “classic” in my peer group. I reviewed it for Plugged In prior to its theatrical re-release earlier this summer.
It’s obviously got plenty of R-rated content concerns. But the best comedic moments, “These go to 11,” hold up. And as all effective satire does, the writers evince a deep affection for the subject that they so playfully eviscerate throughout that film—namely, the indulgent narcissism of rock ‘n’ roll practitioners circa 1984.
It’s a gutsy thing to try to revisit something like Spinal Tap 40 years later. A lot of the jokes here coax out a half-hearted chuckle, but rarely the belly-laugh guffaws the original invited.
What’s inescapable—and I don’t think this is an accident, either—is the movie’s themes of aging and death. The film jokes about it relentlessly. But nevertheless, this is a film made by four guys who are a lot closer to the end than they were back in 1984. Blond-and-brown locks are snowy white on all three of these septuagenarian rockers, and none of them as depicted here would look out of place at a Gandalf cosplay convention.
For me, at least, the effect of this silly sequel was an odd combination of melancholy and meditative, and it prompted some surprisingly deep existential questions: What am I doing with my life? What—and who—do I want to be when my hair (OK, if I had hair) is snow white? And who am I developing relationships with, doing life with? Who will be there at the end?
Perhaps those reflections are prompted by the fact that there’s been a lot of death around me lately, both personally and in the broader world in which we live. (I write these words one day after Charlie Kirk’s tragic and shocking murder.) Yes, Spinal Tap 2 is a comedy: But this odd sequel stirred up in me more contemplation than chuckles today. It’s a reminder that the stories we encounter onscreen intersect our personal lives in unpredictable, sometimes unexpectedly deep ways—even, sometimes, if it’s a movie about really old rockers singing about a woman’s “Big Bottom.”
Should you see Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues? There’s plenty of content here that leans toward a negatory answer to that question. But there’s some heart and reflections on mortality mixed in as well.
After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.
