The votes go up to 11......

Rating: 9/10 (8 April 2002)

This Is Spinal Tap is brilliant on several levels. It is a hilarious comedy, the music is excellent, the concept is fantastic, and it is a wonderfully accurate spoof as well.
The preparation which went into this film included going on tour with the band Saxon, which allegedly inspired the superb sequence where the band gets lost backstage on tour. Although Status Quo claim the film was based on them, it was from the Saxon tour that much of the detail was taken.
The characters, though, are quintessentially British. David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel (whose amplifiers go up to 11 instead of the usual 10) and Derek Smalls are archetypes of faded British rock musicians desperately trying to be cosmopolitan in an industry dominated by bigger, bolder, louder Americans.
If you are a rock fan you will laugh long and loud at this film. If you are a British rock fan, you will laugh even louder. And watch out for the surreal Stonehenge sequence, which proves once and for all that standards of arithmetic teaching are not what they were....