Perhaps the best news of this troubled summer is that SPINAL TAP 2: THE END CONTINUES is the equal of the original. Walking that fine line between stupid and clever, it is once again a razor-sharp satire of both the music business and documentary filmmaking, lacerating the pomposity and the venality of both with breathtaking precision. One character may opine that it’s not supposed to be fun, it’s the music business, but the further (mis)adventures of rock’s most clueless band is nothing but.
Once again Marty DiBergi (director Rob Reiner), still wearing his iconic USS Coral Sea baseball cap, is training his cameras on Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), Nigel Tufnell (Christopher Guest), and David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) as they are set to play their last ever concert. It wasn’t their idea. Instead, it was the brainstorm of Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman), the daughter of Tap’s late, cricket-bat wielding manager, Ian Faith (Tony Hendra in flashback), who left her with nothing but a contract with the band. When Garth Brooks provokes a new interest in Tap’s popularity, Hope sees an opportunity to make some cash and, in fine cinematic fashion, gets the band back together for one last hurrah in New Orleans. Older, but not what anyone would call wiser, the boys drifted away from each other 15 years ago for reasons never adequately explained and pursued (mostly) new careers away from the spotlight.
Old faces pop up as Marty tries to solve the mystery of their breakup while following the predictably chaotic planning and preparations for the gig. Of course, new characters join the mayhem, including a shameless promoter (Chris Addison) with both a brutally clear vision of what his job is and a disability that might just be an advantage in the music business, and the latest in a long line of drummers (Valerie Franco), the stringy punk who takes the job despite a firm belief in healthy living.
The deadpan humor improvised by the original cast has only improved (if that’s possible) with the passage of time. The band, strangers all to cosmetic procedures or media training, are a grizzled lot still sporting the trappings of their heavy metal youth, combine that divine combination of dead certainty and complete ignorance as they speak without filters, waxing grandiloquently philosophical about life or the worst cheeses to store in one’s guitar. The newcomers hold their own with gems of absurdity that blend right in. And Marty, with a straight face and the broadcast voice of an interviewer convinced of the glory of his project, guides them gently into flights of fancy and madness, or just lets the camera roll, eschewing value judgement in favor of the perfect clip. The editing, from quick cutaways with exquisite timing and retort, to an epic montage of auditioning drummers of varying suitability and talent, is as clever as the dialogue, catching the joke(s) in the perfect framework.
Adding to the magic are the cameos of actual rock stars, starting with all the drummers Tap approaches to join them on stage (and who all turn them down with a variation of Questlove’s flat refusal by saying he doesn’t want to die) and moving on to Paul McCartney attempting to give pointers to Tap when things get tense, to Elton John pining for the chance to sing the infamous Stonehenge song with the boys.
SPINAL TAP II: THE END CONTINUES doesn’t just catch us up on the characters from the first film, it slyly builds on our expectations set up for us in it. The boys may be shallow, but there is still room for counter-intuitive character arcs balanced with scathing punch lines. There’s also a brief moment that almost lives outside the film in which the power of music, as exemplified by a street musician in the French Quarter, plays for the pure joy of it on a side street and lifts one character out of his emotional crisis. Don’t worry, it won’t stop him, or anyone else, from the inevitable bungles to come. It’s a quiet tribute to an art form, and a call-out not to the first film, but to the music story cliché of it being all about the music. Only in this case, it has no irony. And it doesn’t slow the pace or interrupt the rhythm. Back in 1984, no one could have guessed that “going to 11” would become a catch phrase with staying power. I don’t know if another catch phrase of that power will emerge from TAP 2 (where did the “la”s come from?) but that moment of that musician sitting on a sidewalk next to St. Louis Cathedral, it’s an image that will stay with me. As will the sheer, unadulterated joy of a cinematic re-visit that, ahem, goes to 11.
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