Goes all the way to 11

Rating: Null/10 (29 March 2001)

As if this film needs another glowing review...
This is a quite brilliant satirical rockumentary of "Spinal Tap", acclaimed as the "loudest band in Britain". Quite an honour.
The best thing about this film is the fact that although it is evident to the viewer that the band is not very talented, original, intelligent or popular, the members of the band are completely oblivious to this fact and those around them seem too polite to actually point this out at any stage. Still, lack of talent, originality and intelligence need never hold one back in rock'n'roll, and teenage boys will listen to any old junk, so that's popularity taken care of. Watching stuff up after stuff up and the consequential blame game is throughly enjoyable.
As a satire, this comes from the top shelf, as good as The Simpsons, Canada's The Newsroom, England's Knowing Me Knowing You and Australia's Frontline. It covers all the bases - Yoko Ono, weird spiritualism, motel room trashing, album cover controversy, even choking on vomit - with aplomb, courtesy of the fact that Tap are so throughly derivative that you can pretty much have them doing every rock'n'roll cliche in the book. Some of the impact has been lost with time - there were a lot more bands like Tap around in 1984 - but the humour is far from obscure. You could do a very similar script today taking off boy bands or rap.
The DVD is one of the most feature heavy you'll find. Even the main menu is funny. The commentary on the film by the band is as funny as the original soundtrack, as they vent about how they were betrayed by Martin Debergi and who is now dead as opposed to being the head of a record company. There's almost as many scenes cut out of the original as there were scenes in the original.
You cannot claim to be a fan of satirical comedy until you have seen this film. Go out and rent it.