Taking a break from reviewing films of Oscars past to review a current film in theaters now!
After forty-one long years the follow-up to the iconic rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap has finally dropped, in the form of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues! Documentarian Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) is back to catch us all up on what's been happening with our favorite fictional heavy metal band. Not seen together in public since their Back From the Dead tour in 2009, the members of Spinal Tap have seemingly had a falling out and gone their very separate ways.
We learn Nigel Tufnil (Christopher Guest) now runs a Northern England cheese and guitar shop, whose store policy includes trading used guitars for fine cheeses, and vice versa. He's finally found love in Moira (Nina Conti), a customer-turned-co-owner. On the other side of the Atlantic, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) lives alone in Morro Bay, California (His former partner Jeanine left him years ago for a surprising new career), and now composes music for podcasts and telephone on-hold lines. Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) runs a London glue museum, having chosen this line of work because he's always seen himself as "the glue" that held Spinal Tap together.
We learn that Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman), daughter of Tap's now-deceased manager Ian Faith, inherited Tap's performance contract, which calls for one final concert, and since the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans had a cancellation, Tap is booked for a farewell show, if they can just find someone to literally risk his or her life by sitting behind Tap's infamous drum kit.
Reiner and co. have crafted a very funny, very loving sequel to their 1984 masterpiece, and while Tap II could never possibly equal that film, this one is nonetheless a lot of fun to watch and contains numerous laugh-out-loud moments. McKean, Shearer and especially Guest have settled right back into their eternally clueless but beloved characters, and the result feels like catching up with old friends we haven't seen in a dog's age. There are some new dynamics at play, like the role reversal of Nigel now being the one who's settled down and David harboring unresolved resentment toward his best friend since childhood. As with all things Tap, their journey toward the final concert is replete with misadventures and awkward moments, like the search for a new drummer (Multiple famous drummers turn down the gig), a less-than-productive collaboration with Sir Paul McCartney, a parasitic co-manager who not only doesn't care about music but literally can't hear it, and the discovery that their rented New Orleans house has been double-booked as a stop on a ghost tour.
While there are some moments of fan service, a few of them very much on-the-nose, a few of them genuinely moving, the film refreshingly doesn't depend on them the way so many legacy sequels do. Reiner, Guest, McKean and Shearer have written and improvised a script that mostly mines new comedic territory instead of regurgitating our favorite moments from the original. This feels like a film they actually wanted to make and not just a cash grab.
Overall Tap II is a very welcome revisitation of these characters and their ongoing personal and professional ineptitude. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who hasn't already seen the 1984 film of course; you need to understand the original story to appreciate this one. Like the original film Tap II is full of goofy rock star humor, it flies by, and if anything feels too short. I look forward to what is surely a treasure trove of deleted scenes....
I give the film ***1/2 out of ****.
No comments:
Post a Comment