Amazon.com video review:
Director Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) solemnly alerts us to the
glory that was Spinal Tap in his introduction to this "rockumentary"
about the legendary British heavy-metal group, featuring lead
guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), lead singer David
St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer),
and a succession of drummers whose careers were cut short by
spontaneously combusting on their stool, drowning in somebody else's
vomit, or otherwise perishing in untimely fashion. Under DiBergi's
studious interrogation, the band and their familiars retrace the
band's evolution from head-bopping Mersey Beat poseurs to head-banging
metal poseurs, each change in musical direction or tonsorial chic
having little effect on the surviving trio's sublime idiocy. For, as
St. Hubbins (he's the "deep" one, relatively speaking) sagely
observes, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."
Happily for us, director Reiner, who developed the underlying story
line with Guest and former Credibility Gap pranksters McKean and
Shearer, stays squarely on the right side of the line, even as his
writer-actors remain hilariously trapped on the other side. In lieu of
a formal shooting script, the quartet created an extensive and
detailed band history ripe with the sort of dead-pan detail that
hard-core rock historians and screwball aficionados will savor on
countless replays; with the three Tap members also musicians
themselves, the "band" developed its stage act under the unsuspecting
noses of L.A. club denizens, who accepted them as just as loud,
flashy, sexist, and obvious as any other mullet-tressed,
leather-garbed brigade of guitar slingers, circa 1984. The resulting
footage thus manages to lob its punch lines and build its characters
(including some thinly veiled character assassinations of various
industry folks) with a loose, tossed-away verve rooted in the
improvisational approach. This Is Spinal Tap remains the
funniest, and most truthful, look at rock culture ever filmed and a
personal best for all involved. --Sam Sutherland
