Excess all areas

Rating: 8/10 (5 September 2008)

The IMDb Key Plot-words says it all really...how many movies can you think of which list "cucumber" as one of its key words? In case you haven't seen it by the way, afore-mentioned cucumber is the culmination of only one of several hilarious sight gags in this priceless send-up of the early 80's rock industry. It's almost as much fun trying to work out just which naff bands from that era Spinal Tap are based on...me, I can obviously see references to Black Sabbath (complete with Sharon Osbourne-type interfering wife-cum-manager!) and veteran UK boogie-merchants Status Quo with their psychedelic beginnings and twin-guitarist, intellectually-challenged duo of Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt, heck they seem to almost prophesy Van Halen and they got to the Black Album years before Metallica! Everybody plays it dead straight which garners maximum comic effect and the set-piece gags are brilliantly set up and deliver big laughs every time. Favourite scenes...? Too many to count but how about the band getting lost on the way to the stage of a dingy Stateside university, harmonising at Graceland, the finger-sandwich scene, the miniature Stonehenge backdrop, replete with to-scale dancing druid-dwarfs, not forgetting the pod-busting sequence. The ridiculously over-the-top sexist lyrics to the Iron Maiden riffed songs will also crack you up. I've actually no time at all for the heavy-metal genre of music, especially its early 80's spandex era so scathingly targeted here (Whitesnake anyone?) and sometimes wonder if true HM fans are in on the joke even as they laugh along with the rest of us... Either way, a spoof movie of the rock scene which sets the gold standard for all succeeding "rockumentaries" (serious and comic!) just as "Airplane" and "The Naked Gun", to name but two did for disaster movies and cop-shows respectively.