Never mind Elton and McCartney, after 40 years Spinal Tap are back

2 weeks ago 2

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues
★★★★
M. 84 minutes. In cinemas

Christopher Guest’s inspired comic creation Nigel Tufnel of Spinal Tap has a straight-faced guilelessness that reminds me of Buster Keaton.

It’s not that he takes himself with undue seriousness. He’s preoccupied instead with the irrationality of the world itself. On one famous occasion, he became baffled by the size of the bread in the band’s backstage snack. Why was it sliced into a piece so small that it couldn’t accommodate a sliver of salami?

After 40 years, Nigel and the boys are back. They still have long hair, although it now makes them resemble a group of grandmothers, while their eyeliner gives them the sad-eyed expression of a family of grieving bloodhounds. And they have found new occupations. Nigel runs a shop selling cheese and guitars in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) is curator of London’s New Museum of Glue and David St Hubbins (Michael McKean) composes the score for a true-crime podcast. He also has a successful sideline in the music used by call centres to torment you while you’re waiting to speak to a human being.

The film’s director, Rob Reiner, says they had not envisaged a sequel. This is Spinal Tap is so well remembered as a precisely calibrated parody of the rock ’n roll world that a return visit seemed unnecessary, but in 2018, a long overdue court case awarded the team the film’s rights and happily, they decided that a sequel would be the logical way to make use of them.

Once again, Reiner is directing as well as playing the role of the mockumentary filmmaker, Marty DiBergi, and he’s covering the lead-up to the band’s reunion concert in New Orleans. The boys haven’t seen one another in 15 years and as Nigel keeps remarking, things are a little awkward. He and David are still harbouring old grudges and they still need to find a drummer. As fans of the first film well know, Tap drummers don’t last long. Fate has a way of stepping in and finding unusual ways for them to die.

One of the many joys of the first film was its typically flawed array of backstage operators facilitating – and hindering – the band’s progress. There are fewer this time, but they make their mark. Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman), the plainspoken daughter of their former manager, has joined them with the misguided idea that managing a band might be fun, and the only publicist she can find is Simon Howler (Chris Addison), a musical philistine with a tin ear who insists that the boys do a fitness course because they’re not agile enough onstage.

Nor does he pay due respect to Elton John when Elton joins the band in rehearsal. Both Elton and Paul McCartney sportingly appear in cameo roles. McCartney drops in for a surprise visit only to find himself settling one of the many differences which flare up between Nigel and David.

Nigel, however, seems a bit subdued this time around. Some of the passion has gone out of his earnestness. He’s always been at his best when explaining things and here, he seems truly engaged only when demonstrating the workings of his guitar’s pedal board. The unexpected sounds it makes drive David mad, which just causes Nigel to love it all the more.

I’ll leave the last word to Derek, always the philosopher. Contemplating the trio’s life after death, he comes up with an optimistic new song – Rockin’ In The Urn.

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