Rebel Without A Cause aged well. Citizen Kane aged well. A Fistful of Dollars aged well. Although I haven’t seen it, Apocalypse Now reputedly aged well. Spinal Tap, however, has not.
I suppose it comes with the subject matter. Spinal Tap is a ‘rockumentery’ – it follows the American tour of the English rock band ‘Spinal Tap’ in the style of a documentary. This style harms it, just because it completely irradicates any possibility for camera trickery and a decent script – you just don’t have people cracking off jokes in a ‘real life’ environment, and documentaries don’t often use fisheye lenses and cross filters.
Thus, most of the film is a parody of the rock bands at the time. Look at the last three words in that sentence. At. The. Time. The time when this was filmed was a disappointingly Big Brotherless 1984, before I was even born. This means that the parody is completely lost on me, as I couldn’t really have listened to rock music 3 years before my conception. The movie may have been relevant back in 84, but for those of us under 20 it is hardly laugh a minute material.
That said, there are some things that remain laugh out loud funny for the Homer Simpson generation. The parts where the band act blonder than a very blonde person are classic, especially the ‘Amp that goes up to eleven’ and the ‘lost backstage’ scenes. However, the few humorous scenes are interspersed by long parts that just are not funny in the slightest. In fact, some of the stuff is so unfunny that I can’t see how it actually made it into the final cut of the movie. There are bits where you follow the band around and you watch them…meet people. No jokes, no worthwhile dialogue, just Spinal Tap talking to record executives. When you are watching a comedy film and you don’t laugh for 15 minutes, you know that something has gone wrong.
In a film like this, storyline is not that important. Which is positive generalization for this film, because the storyline is so corny and run of the mill that it wouldn’t be out of place in a Disney movie. In fact, there are only two real plot points – member of band and manager leave, member of band returns. That’s it. If you had this plot in a serious film, you would be very disappointed. Lucky it’s a comedy then.
The DVD is a two-disk set. Unlike most double disk sets (*cough* Pearl Harbor *cough*) there is actually some worthwhile extra stuff on the bonus disk. Even the first disk has some fairly cool stuff on, including a commentary by the band that is actually funnier than the feature film. Maybe because it was recorded recently, and thus appeals to my younger taste? Also included on the first disk is a very, very funny introduction that appears on the menu screen. I should really spoil it for you, but I’m in a happy mood.
The second disk contains one hour of deleted scenes, some of which are more than worthy of replacing some of the stuff in the final cut of the film, some of which are deservedly confined to the parts of the DVD which only fanatics and your intrepid reporter will ever watch. The cut zoo scene is particularly great, featuring the line “I’ve never been to Africa, but I reckon I could hold my own if I got in a fight…with a gorilla”.
There is a plethora of other stuff thrown on the DVD, and I can’t say I’ve trawled through it all yet. However, it is always nice to see a lot of extra features on a disc. In fact, this DVD is almost a library of Spinal Tap material.
So, overall, it’s a poor film blessed with a great DVD release. Cheers for reading, each and every one of you. Especially you, prize fund hander outer man.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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Feb 15th, 2002
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