Tap Taps Out

1 star

Wow. I thought the band was old until I heard the jokes.

In 1984, director Rob Reiner joined forces with comedians Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer to create This is Spinal Tap, a mostly improvised mockumentary about the rise and fall of a heavy metal band. It wasn’t a big hit in theaters, probably because its unique comic style was unlike anything audiences had seen before. Still, it quickly became a cult classic with its release on home video, especially among musicians/music fans who could appreciate the truth behind the humor.

Forty-one years later, Reiner gets the band back together to try to capture the magic with Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, based on the thin premise of a contractual obligation for the group to play one more live show. He shouldn’t have bothered. What was cinematic lightning in a bottle four decades ago now plays like something nasty floating in a punchbowl in 2025. Everything about the film feels old and tired. The jokes are lame, with the best barely warmed-over rehashes of jokes that were much funnier in the original. The worst are sight gags like Shearer, now the owner of a glue museum in New Orleans, getting a chess piece stuck up his nose. It’s not funny; it’s embarrassing.