Rob Reiner’s 1984 comedy film “This Is Spinal Tap” still amuses me a lot for many good reasons. While keeping its attitude as straight as possible via its ground-breaking mockumentary style, the movie has a lot of fun with many absurd moments generated among its clownish but somehow endearing main characters, and many of its funniest moments do not look aged at all even after more than 40 years since it came out.

The movie is presented as a fictional documentary following a British heavy metal band named, yes, Spinal Tap. As shown from several “archival footage clips”, Spinal Tap was initially a skiffle band called the Originals in the early 1960s, but they had to change the name of the band more than once for a rather silly reason, and then they became more famous thanks to their rather ridiculous song, which is titled “Listen to the Flower People”. Not long after that, the band moved onto heavy metal, and we later see them performing one of their recent songs, which is fairly passable but sounds very absurd with its preposterous lyrics.

Anyway, the main focus of the documentary in the film is the 1982 US concert tour of the band, which is mainly for promoting their latest album “Smell the Glove”. Although the album is quite problematic for many reasons including its blatantly sexist album cover design, the three main members of the band and their manager are still confident that the album will be successful enough to boost their rather underwhelming status at present. There was a time when they were popular enough to draw more than 10,000 fans to their concert, but, alas, now they can attract around 1,000 ~ 1,500 audiences now if they are lucky.

The director of the documentary in the film, played by Reiner himself, throws some serious questions to the main members of Spinal Tap during his occasional interview sessions. They all try to present themselves as musicians both talented and passionate, but they usually end up making themselves look all the sillier than before. In fact, you may actually feel a bit sorry for the director, who must tolerate the sheer ego and idiocy of his incorrigible human subjects.

Nevertheless, we often cannot help but chuckle and giggle thanks to a lot of amusement from many of the memorable moments in the film. The main reason of their absolute hilarity comes from how utterly serious the members of Spinal Tap and several figures around them are, and that is exemplified well by one very funny moment when Nigel (Christopher Guest) eagerly shows us a heap of electric guitars and then his own special amplifier, which can be dialed up to the level of, yes, 11. When the director seriously asks the reason for that, Nigel only finds himself pathetically failing to give any good answer, and it only reminds us more of how ludicrous he and his two fellow main members are as mired in their petty ego and pride.

Not so surprisingly, it has been said that the movie is not so far from reality in many aspects. After all, even if you are not so interested in rock music (FULL DISCOSURE: I am one of such dull persons), you have probably heard about some of the truly ridiculous stories about those real-life rock bands such as, say, the Rolling Stones, and you may smile a bit when one of the main members of Spinal Tap complains about a rather trivial issue with the ham and bread served to him.

As the members of the band keep going down in their increasingly inconsequential career, the movie adds more absurdity and hilarity to be savored. Besides that stupefyingly comic moment involved with a little model of Stonehenge, there is some comic tension involved with their latest drummer, who may die under a mysterious circumstance just like all of his predecessors (One of them was choked to death due to the vomit which was incidentally not his, for instance). When the girlfriend of David (Michael McKean) gets involved more into their career and business as becoming their manager, things only get all the worse among them, and it seems that they all are reaching the end of their career – especially when they have no choice but to start their next concert tour in Japan.

Nevertheless, the movie also regards its main characters with some admiration and affection. Yes, they are still quite silly and ridiculous to the bone, but you can also sense their remaining passion and dedication whenever they try to go through another concert. Around the end of the film, Nigel and David come to have a touching moment of reconciliation as sincerely performing together on the stage, and they and their fellow band members come to look a bit less ridiculous than before.

It has been well-known that Reiner encouraged his cast members to do a lot of improvisation in front of the camera, and the overall result is quite fluid and effortless to say the least. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer, who did contribute a lot to the screenplay along with Reiner as reflected by their names on the screenplay, always click well with each other whenever they are on the screen together, and they are also pretty believable as your typical sub-par rock band musicians. In fact, they did their job so well that their fictional band became gradually popular along with the movie itself, and they actually did concerts under the name of their fictional band in real life.

In conclusion, “This is Spinal Tap” is still one of the most hilarious movies even though it was followed by a lot of junior mockumentaries during last several decades, and it is also one of the most notable achievements of the long and illustrious career of Reiner, who was tragically murdered along with his wife not long after his last film “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” (2025) came out a few months ago. While he may not be a great director, he was at least an undeniably skillful filmmaker who gave us a number of excellent films to remember including “This is Spinal Tap”, and we will surely miss him more as admiring and appreciating his considerable cinematic contribution more.