Ok, so “This is Spinal Tap” is #170-somthing on IMDB’s top-250 movies. I’ve heard nothing but raves about it. I loved “Waiting for Guffman” and “Best in Show” so I thought it was a no brainer. I rented it, expecting more genius from Christopher Guest and friends.
And both my girlfriend and I were bored silly. She actually got up to do the dishes in the middle. I struggled through to the end. There were maybe 5 funny bits in the whole movie that I saw, (The bassist getting stuck in his coccoon, the amps that go to 11, the little stonehenge, the violin on the guitar, and MAYBE Paul Shaffer yelling “kick my ass”) but the rest just bored me to tears. That was the longest 82 minutes of my life.
Now I’m going to have a hard sell getting the gf to watch Guffman or BiS…
Can someone explain to me what makes this a classic? What am I missing? I much preferred “Fear of a Black Hat” and that was practically the same movie, except with rappers instead of rockers. Are we the only two people to hate it?
I saw This is Spinal Tap when it first came out. I remember walking out of the theater thinking “I paid $5.00 to see that?” As I thought about it more and more over the next few days, I couldn’t stop laughing. It really is a good mock-documentary.
However, if you didn’t find it as funny as you want, you should try to find Fear of a Black Hat.
Well, for one thing, it was the first (to my knowledge) of the mockumentary genre. I really laugh my ass off when I watch it, still to this day. It’s a spoof of the rock culture AND the documentary movie.
CB4 and Fear of a Black Hat may be funnier (I don’t agree with that), but they had Spinal Tap’s shoulders to stand on. Plus, Rap culture is quite a bit sillier than rock culture, so there’s a little more source material.
It may have something to do with age as well…I first saw the film when it was released to theatres and found it amusing. Recently purchased the DVD and found it very, very funny. Compare the characters in the film to say, Jeff Beck or perhaps the Moody Blues and you may find that the film was funnily accurate in portraying a rock band that doesn’t realize it may be time to stop.
There was a so-so 90s “concert film/retrospective” video released, a sort of “Where Are They Now?” type of deal, in which the boys, among other things, tried adding a rap flavor to their music. I forget the exact title.
I thought, and still think, it’s hilarious. Possibly the reason it’s not so great to someone seeing it for the first time now is the Tolkien Syndrome.
Tolkien Syndrome: (n., towl’kin sin’drum) The reaction of a newcomer to a classic/originating/first-ever novel, movie, or musical piece after first having seen/read/listened to 20/30/40/50/60 years of imitations and knock-offs. Ex.: What the heck is so good about that Lord of the Rings stuff? Robert Jordan has that Tolkien guy beat by umpteen books!
My god. I think Spinal Tap is sublime. I use semi-quotes from it all the time, much to my friends’ chagrin.
“There’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
“You can’t really dust for vomit, can you?”
Two words: Shit Sandwich.
“Well, that’s just nitpicking, isn’t it?”
or one of my all-time favorites…“I’m just as God made me, sir.”
Or the one guy in the audience at the amusement park, watching them during the “Jazz Odyssey” doing the thumbs-down - priceless. I do that all the time. The scene with the cucumber…silly, but great. How the cold sore moves from one band member to the next…loverly. “Dobly”. Man, I love that movie.
But when I showed it to my boyfriend, he was distinctly unimpressed. I think he missed a lot of the humor because he’s not much of a music fan - a lot of what was funny to me was so because of all the real documentaries on say, the Rolling Stones (like Gimme Shelter) I’ve seen, and he hasn’t.
A couple of weeks ago, Spinal Tap played here in NYC at the Beacon Theater. I didn’t go, not wanting to risk 50 or 60 bucks. I had forgotten all about it until this thread. I only found one review, and it was positive: http://www.ink19.com/issues/july2001/liveInk/spinalTap.html
I saw the movie when it first came out and loved it. However, I saw it on video recently and I thought it was only funny in patches. Go figure.
While I enjoyed Spinal Tap, when it comes to fake Rock Documentries, i prefered “the Rutles”. If you like Monty Python, “the Rutles” is right up your alley(and for good reason).
oh yeah,and I loved “best in show” too.
Spinal Tap definetly improves on further viewing. It’s an amazingly subtle movie. Christopher Guest, for example, has the best reaction shots: when something goes over his head, he has this perfect look of cowlike stupidity, before his brain resets and he goes back to his last argument. (“Yeah, but… it goes to eleven!”)
While it might not be the movie for everyone, if you’ve ever been in a band or been in a close relationship with someone in a band, you will be able to find at least three or four scenes to which you will respond, “I know exactly what that’s like.”
Some of my favorite moments:
Nigel pointing to a guitar sitting on a stand and saying, “Listen to that sustain.”
David, after Nigel leaves the stage at the AFB gig, saying, “We shant work together again,” quite matter-of-factly.
Trying to find the stage and passing the same janitor repeatedly.
The looks on Nigel’s face each time Jeanine (David’s girlfriend) contributes something to the discussions. Oh yeah–been there, done that.
“Oh how they danced, the little children of Stonehenge!”
Oh man, Harry Shearer always takes my breath away! He’s an ace writer, but usually takes the bittiest on-screen roles; in Spinal Tap, he’s the bass player. His cucumber scene was beautiful!
I enjoyed the movie most because I was well-esconced in the Chapel Hill music scene when it came out, and the movie’s observations about umm, some, musician’s and hanger-on’s egos were funny as hell.
Perhaps immersion in that world endeared the humor to my mind. It was right on time. Bonus points to a pre-“Nanny” fame Fran Drescher for her portrayal of the A&R doyenne.
I agree. Many of the jokes are very subtle. I just recently noticed (and noticed is the wrong term, it was pointed out to me) during the song “Big Bottoms” that all three guys are playing bass guitar, the keyboardist stays at the low end of the keyboard, etc. Everything about the song, aside from the goofy lyrics, are about “bottoms.”
And as has been said, Nigel’s reactions are priceless. I love at the end, as the credits role, Marty DiBergi is asking the characters what they would be doing if they couldn’t work in a rock band. Nigel says he’d be working in a haberdashery or something like that. Marty asks him if he would be happy in that sort of job and Nigel replies, “I don’t know. What are the hours?”
Still cracks me up.
And if anyone with a DVD player hasn’t seen the DVD of Spinal Tap, I highly recommend it. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Hary Shearer do the voice over in character as (respectively) Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls. Throughout the film they gripe about what a hack job Marty DiBergi had done on them (“He never shows when we actually find the stage.”) and how useless the manager was, etc. It was hilarious.
“There live a race of people called the druids. Nobody
knows who they were, or what they were doing.”
Close-ups of their eye shadow on stage.
Nigel’s inability to make a sandwich out of tiny pieces of
bread, and the manager’s sincere efforts to deal with this,
finally leading to, “I just want to know that this won’t
affect your performance.”
Unloading that demon-head thing at JFK airport.
The documentary director’s stupid USS Cole hat.
The band’s relation of the story of how they came to be
called The Thamesmen.
The footage of them on some “Ready Steady Go” program doing
“Gimme Some Money” with Ed Begley Jr. on drums.
