Age has not withered it. It'll be every bit as funny two decades down the road.

Rating: Null/10 (6 May 2003)

I think "Spinal Tap" is worth seeing roughly once every other year. It remains as fresh, funny, and on-target as ever it was, and there's enough of a foundation to keep it from the sin of fluffiness. Rob Reiner has gone on to other directorial triumphs, and the Guest-McKean-Shearer triumvirate has proven that this film was no fluke with its more recent gems--most lately, "A Mighty Wind." The fact that these three are musicians as well as actors and satirists helps to give this film an additionally wonderful insider's perspective. It's hard to believe that there people out there who have yet to experience this one, but they should lose no time in renting or buying it--ideally in the Collector's Edition. Among the more marvelous aspects of the movie are: the great deadpan spoofs of earlier commercial rock genres through that this relentlessly derivative band has passed over its career; the dozens of beautifully realized secondary characters who give the movie a lot of its laughs; and the fact that, despite their terminal stupidity and shallowness, the guys in Spinal Tap emerge as people you--or, anyway, I--feel sorry for when everything seems to be going against them. To me, it's the vestigial underlying humanity of St. Hubbins, Tufnel, and Smalls that makes this movie something more than just a silly spoof. The same can be said, by the way, for "A Mighty Wind," "Best in Show," and "Waiting for Guffman." The characters may be more than a little silly, but they remain...well...sort of human, too. I can't wait to see this film again, sometime in 2005.