Warning!!! Possible Spoilers. Read at your own risk!!!

Rating: Null/10 (10 May 2003)

This is Spinal Tap, director Rob Reiner's mockumentary of the rockumentary genre, is a hilarious look at the quasi famous band Spinal Tap. Set in 1982, the group makes their way across the United States in hopes of reviving their drowning career. Spinal Tap, in total denial that the popularity of their music and on stage antics is dwindling, bounces from city to city around the nation playing to smaller crowds in smaller arenas as the film progresses. This is Spinal Tap is a side-splitting view of a fictitious band in the hay days of heavy metal on the verge of becoming obsolete. The band Spinal Tap is a representation of everything that was wrong with music in the 1980's. The members of Spinal Tap are living in excess with their long hair, double basses (seriously, a double guitar is okay, but a double bass really pushes the limit), ridiculous guitar solos, and even those famous amps that go up to 11 for that extra kick. Spinal Tap song titles are completely absurd, including `Big Bottom' and the semi-ballad `Lick My Love Pump'. The band doesn't even have a true musical identity or a solidified lineup as they have trouble keeping drummers for reasons from gardening accidents to spontaneous combustion. At one point the film cuts to them playing `Listen to the Flower People' as the hippie band Jamboree in the 1960's, proof that these guys really have no direction or a clue as to what the hell is really going on. When anything goes wrong within the band, the blame is placed anywhere from the sound mixer to the hair products they use. These guys are so incompetent that they can't find the stage they are playing on that night without a little backstage help.
This is Spinal Tap is very comical, but not so much in a traditional or slapstick way. What makes this movie amusing is the subtle approach to its sense of humor. The actors don't blatantly come out and crack jokes or put the selves in harms way Jackass style. The comedy in this film resides in how seriously the characters in the film take themselves, unaware that they are not in fact `rock gods' in the traditional sense or even any sense for that matter. The band is completely self-indulgent and narcissistic. Their obsession with showmanship as opposed to the music they create hinders their ability to truly rock the audience, which is evident when Derek has trouble getting out of his cocoon at the beginning of one concert.
In the end, it's all of the frills of a life on the road that cause the band to be in their position. Nobody shows for a Spinal Tap record signing because they really didn't care about being 'true' musicians, but rather a music spectacle. When the band tries playing improvised metal at a nearly empty stage on an amusement park, it is deserved. I'm not saying that I hated the band at that point, and in fact I laughed even harder when Spinal Tap resorts to playing in Japan because they lacked acceptance elsewhere in the world. What makes This is Spinal Tap so damn funny is that the characters take themselves so serious, and viewers can't help but laugh at the absurdity that drives this band to act and perform the way they do. The actors do their jobs so well that if viewers weren't informed that this film was made as a joke, some may walk away disappointed by what they had just seen. This is Spinal Tap is successfully comedically effective because the film appears as one big inside joke and the only ones who don't seem to get it are the characters on screen.