Before The Office, before Borat, before Best in Show or Waiting for Guffman or VH1’s Behind the Music, there was Spinal Tap. Or, to be more accurate, This Is Spinal Tap.
This influential 1984 movie arguably wasn’t the first mockumentary, a satirical parody of a given subject using a faux documentary filmmaking approach. Woody Allen’s movies Zelig (1983) and Take the Money and Run (1969) predate it, as does Swiss Spaghetti Harvest from 1957.
But none of those earlier proto-mockumentaries established the conventions of an entire genre as effectively as Spinal Tap did. Like a classic Saturday Night Live skit from the same era—no surprise, stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer all had stints on that show—the film launched catchphrases into the American lexicon that you’ll still hear today, more than 40 years later: “These go to 11.” “None more black.” “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
So what’s it about, you ask? Rob Reiner (who also wrote and directed Spinal Tap)stars as Marty DiBergi, a documentary filmmaker whose passion project is chronicling an aging British metal act’s attempt to reclaim relevance. He reminisces about the first time he saw Spinal Tap in 1966 at the Electric Banana in Greenwich Village: “That night, I heard a band that, for me, redefined rock ‘n’ roll. I remember being knocked out by their exuberance, their raw power … and their punctuality.”
And now, 17 years and 15 albums later, the members of Spinal Tap are determined to “Tap into America” in a revival tour that will, hopefully, remind everyone that they were once hailed as “one of England’s loudest bands.”
As the mockumentary opens, it’s 1982, and the band is eager to promote its provocatively titled new album Smell the Glove, while performing the hits hard-core fans love: “Sex Farm Woman,” “Big Bottom” and, of course, “Stonehenge.”
Along the way, Reiner and his sketch-acting crew largely ad-lib a story about an aging band that manages to capture—or skewer—virtually every rock cliché in the history of rock clichés: feuding band mates, controlling girlfriends, frustrated managers, wireless systems picking up airplane signals, destroyed hotel rooms, too-tight spandex, earnestly wacky spirituality … and more!
Spinal Tap relishes satirizing the tropes of narcissistic, emotionally stunted musicians who have somehow managed to stay together for decades. Those relationships undergird the movie’s many laugh-out-loud moments with a surprising sweetness.
Band co-leaders Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins frequently quarrel, a spark that roars into a full-blown fire when David’s stereotypically overbearing and hyper-controlling girlfriend, Jeanine, arrives and inserts herself into the band’s business, Yoko Ono-style. But despite Nigel and David’s temporarily fractured relationship, the fact that they’ve been friends since they were 8 years old ultimately wins out.
The story concludes with some mildly touching moments of humility, reconciliation and (if you squint hard enough) a kind of redemption to the band’s story.
The band appropriates (superficially if not substantively) occultic imagery that was prevalent in the metal scene in the 1970s and ‘80s. (And, to some extent, still is.) A huge skull with Satan-like horns hangs behind band members on stage—though it’s hard to take it too seriously when you see a roadie screwing the horns into place before a performance. An emcee before one concert bellows menacingly, “Direct from hell, Spinal Tap!”
The band revives their older hit “Stonehenge” after not performing it, apparently, for some time. With each musician clad ominously in hooded cloaks, Nigel introduces the song: “In ancient times, hundreds of years before the dawn of history, there lived an ancient race of people: the druids. No one knows who they were or what they were doing. But their legacy remains hewn into the living rock of Stonehenge.” Lyrics also mention demons, banshees, the Greek god Pan and, of course, those magical, mystical druids.
Another song, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Creation,” appropriates phrases and images from the Genesis creation story to describe the birth of rock: “Out of the emptiness/Salvation! Salvation!/Rhythm and light and sound/’Twas the rock and roll creation/’Twas a terrible big bang/’Twas the ultimate mutation/Ying was searching for his yang/And he looked, and he saw that it was good.”
Presumably, that song came from the album The Gospel According to Tap, about which one fictional music critic says, “This pretentious, ponderous collection of religious rock songs is enough to prompt the question: What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap? And couldn’t he have rested on that day, too?”
Jeanine, for her part, is genuinely and deeply invested in astrology as a worldview that shapes how she sees people and events. She repeatedly talks about different band members’ signs, as well as creating custom horoscopes for the band (and Zodiac-themed costume designs for each person, too, though they aren’t ever used).
As the band visits Graceland to pay respects to Elvis, one of the guys mentions that Elvis was on TV shortly before he died, performing the song “Someone Up There Likes Me.” When language gets harsh in the same scene, Derek tells the guys to tone it down out of respect for “the King.”
After the band’s manager mocks an aging hotel employee’s appearance (“This twisted old fruit here”), the man replies, “I’m just as God made me, sir.”
We hear passing, generic references to the band embracing a stereotypical life of “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.”
Several band members frequently have admiring groupies hanging on their arms, and they canoodle a bit with these younger women on various hotel couches, too. David and Jeanine kiss. A few women, including Jeanine, wear cleavage-baring outfits. The guys are shown performing sans shirts a couple of times.
Nigel jokes with Marty that the band members have “armadillos in our trousers,” and that women are both terrified and attracted to them because of it: “It’s really quite frightening, the size.” After that scene, several camera shots zoom in on the men’s spandex-clad crotches. Another scene pushes this cliché deeply into parody territory when one of the guys can’t get through security at the airport because he’s got an aluminum-foil-covered cucumber in his pants. A female security guard makes the discovery, with her hand-held wand buzzing tellingly as she repeatedly waves it above his groin area. Someone uses a suggestive double entendre that seems to reference the male anatomy.
Several songs include ridiculously over-the-top references to sex, most notably “Big Bottoms.” Among other things, we hear lines like, “The bigger the cushion/The sweeter the pushin’, thats what I say,” and, “I met her on Monday/’Twas my lucky bun day.” One line employs a particularly creative and explicit synonym for the male anatomy: “My baby fits me like a flesh tuxedo.”
“Sex Farm” plows straight into the realm of lyrical farce: “Working on a sex farm/Plowing through your bean field/Getting out my pitchfork/Poking at your hay.” Nigel is working on a piano ballad called “Lick My Love Pump” (which, thankfully, doesn’t yet have any lyrics).
The band’s record company, Polymer, is uncomfortable with the album cover for the band’s new album, Smell the Glove. It shows a naked woman on all fours wearing a dog collar and a man’s arm as he holds her on a leash. The band struggles to understand how this could be considered offensive, but the label ultimately rejects the image. (Worth noting: Sabrina Carpenter’s forthcoming album Man’s Best Friend features very similar imagery that has, 41 years after Spinal Tap, recently provoked similar controversy. The image is almost certainly an homage to Spinal Tap, and it shows her in a similar position next to a man’s arm as he pulls her hair in a way similar to the unused Smell the Glove album cover.)
The cover for the band’s album Intravenus de Milo features the famous topless, armless Greek statue of the goddess Aphrodite (Venus in Roman mythology)—complete with an IV and blood bag hanging from a medical stand next to her.
We hear a litany of ways that the band’s various drummers have died horribly and mysteriously throughout the years, including spontaneous combustion, “a bizarre gardening accident” and choking on vomit—someone else’s. (Drummers dying bizarrely is a longstanding rock-history footnote.) [Spoiler Warning] The band’s current drummer does indeed go up in a puff of smoke in yet another round of spontaneous combustion near the end of the film.
A flashback shows the band’s manager destroying a hotel room (a frequent occurrence for bands in the 1970s) with a wooden cricket bat.
About 30 f-words and half a dozen s-words. One minor character’s name is Artie Fufkin, and he repeats his last name quite a few times, for obvious comedic effect. God’s name is paired with “d–n” once. Jesus’ name is misused twice. We hear “a–” four or five times. The band’s song “H— Hole” repeats that phrase several times.
Characters drink various kinds of alcoholic beverages at social events throughout the film. Lots of people smoke cigarettes or cigars. One band member puffs on a pipe in a couple of scenes. We hear verbal allusions to drug use being a part of the rock lifestyle, but we don’t actually see any drug use.
The band’s manager, while delivering an angry litany of everything he does on the group’s behalf, makes a demeaning statement about Jewish people: “I prize the rent out of the local Hebrews.”
This Is Spinal Tap snaps a savagely satirical Polaroid of rock excess, circa the early 1980s. We watch as a band on the tail end of its career tries to navigate that painful downward trajectory. Much of the time, its members act like poster children for narcissism and arrested emotional development. But as the best satires do, we also glimpse surprising moments of humanity and self-awareness at certain points, too, in a story that ultimately affirms friendship and perseverance.
Between some seriously funny moments—much of which was reportedly ad-libbed without a script—we must contend with a fair bit of R-rated language, too. Things are fairly restrained—apart from the song lyrics quoted throughout this review, I should say—until Jeanine shows up. At that point, the f-word count spikes as simmering tensions between David and Nigel come to an ugly head. About half of the language issues in the film come in one conversation where things really explode.
Speaking personally as a child of the ‘80s, there’s plenty here that prompts a kind of nostalgia for that era, even as the movie effectively eviscerates some of its excesses, too. It’s not a movie for kids, obviously. But from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I also wonder how effectively this story will translate to those who didn’t grow up during that time.
As R-rated comedies go, this one doesn’t quite turn things up to 11. But the content here still gets pretty loud, metaphorically speaking, even if the movie’s conclusion is a quietly poignant one.
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.
