Spinal Tap II: The End Continues: the rockers reunite for a self-congratulatory meta-sequel

What’s that famous This Is Spinal Tap quote about a fine line between stupid and clever? Ever since Rob Reiner’s 1984 mockumentary about a fictitious but utterly convincing British heavy metal band (American actors Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer, with flawless English accents and serious musical chops) slowly evolved from underground hit to beloved pop culture icon, Tap’s four co-founders have pitched their rock ’n’ roll creation to perfection. 

The idiocy of the music industry and its hapless prima donnas’ excesses and egomania have consistently been rendered with a cutting-edge ingenuity that has allowed the band to both send up and celebrate their cult status with official album releases like 1992’s Break Like the Wind and headline gigs at Wembley Stadium and Glastonbury. On a success scale of one to ten, Spinal Tap’s track record, like their infamous Marshall amp, goes up to 11. 

This very belated sequel, inevitably, risks that near-flawless legacy. After the original film, subsequent onscreen and audio appearances such as The Return of Spinal Tap (1992) or Back from the Dead (2009) felt less like canon and more like joyous bonus material (on a DVD commentary with all four in character, Reiner’s put-upon filmmaker Marty DiBergi bemoans his Tap follow-up, Kramer vs. Kramer vs. Godzilla). The scale and official nature of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues invites direct comparison not just to the original but to, for example, Blazing Saddles (1974) and Airplane! (1980) – arguably the greatest movie parody of all time. 

For Tap devotees, there’s the nostalgic thrill of watching the band get back in concert together. The premise is that, after the death of manager Ian Faith, his daughter Hope (Kerry Godliman) realises that their contract demands one final reunion concert. At the same time, a viral online clip of country star Garth Brooks covering the group’s hit ‘Big Bottom’ offers unexpected hope for a potential new direction. 

And so, 15 years after last performing, the three core members cautiously reassemble in New Orleans, once again trailed by DiBergi’s cameras, once again seeking a new drummer for their lethally risky rhythm section, and coming up with a peppy, fearless new female bandmate (actor-musician Valerie Franco). Meanwhile, cynical British music impresario Simon Howler (Chris Addison) – a gleeful splicing of Simons Cowell and Fuller – waits to exploit any unexpectedly fatal dividends. 

In their unscripted scenes, the main quartet’s improv talents appear undimmed. DiBergi catches up with Nigel Tufnel (Guest), now the owner of a cheese and guitar shop; David St Hubbins (McKean), writing jingles for phone hold music; and Derek Smalls (Shearer), running a glue museum in Tooting. As ever, it’s the small touches that delight: the inclusion in Smalls’ adhesives collection of a book called Polymer and Polyamory, the sight of Tufnel in a Sooty T-shirt. And there’s an inspired guitar / cheese visual gag clearly conceived as the new ‘amps to 11’ set piece. 

What’s surprising is the diminished spark when the trio finally reunite. Reiner’s DiBergi features more heavily than before, and the band dynamic is now largely confined to extended tetchy rehearsal sessions. An unconvincing St. Hubbins / Tufnel feud dulls the chemistry and the innate poignancy of lifelong best friends reckoning with their history. More bizarrely, this clash gets swiftly resolved in a scene that even junks the mockumentary cinéma vérité conceit in curiously slapdash fashion. There’s another awkward recalibration. Although Tap are supposed to have had some success within their world, the basic joke is their crudely overblown, if sometimes charmingly naive, inanity. So seeing real-life celebrities fawning over them – finding that Questlove considers them “legends”, and that Paul McCartney regards the rhyming couplet “flesh tuxedo / pink torpedo” as “literature” – feels off. 

Surely McCartney and fellow extended-cameo co-star Elton John are honouring Reiner and company, not DiBergi and Tap? It’s a subtle difference, and doubtless, at this stage, many viewers won’t want to carp. But this could also be seen as Spinal Tap jumping its own (to use another album title) Shark Sandwich: the sharp lines of sophisticated satire now blurred into the contours of a somewhat soft, self-congratulatory meta-sequel. Playing a little too much like the hagiographic brand of music doc that Spinal Tap once ruthlessly skewered – and which has reached new extremes with artist-approved films like Taylor Swift film Miss Americana (2020), among many others – Spinal Tap Mark II offers what David St Hubbins once called a little too much perspective.

► Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is in UK cinemas now.