This Is Spinal Tap

Pros: Aluminum foil penile implants will not escape airport security detection.

Cons: There’s nothing wrong with being sexy, but being sexist is another matter altogether.

The Bottom Line: Not since “Gimme Shelter” has a “rockumentary” lived up to its potential as a social force containing true human interest. “This Is Spinal Tap” surpasses even that.

Review: The documentary as an art form is an oft-overlooked and seldom commercially viable medium. This is rather surprising, actually, with the viewing public’s newfound fascination with “reality TV” and the constant blurring of the lines between ...

Pros: Design, performances, humor, better with repeat viewings.

Cons: Not ALWAYS funny.

The Bottom Line: is rockin'.

Review: One of mockumentary This is Spinal Tap's finer aspects is its verisimilitude. On more than one occasion, someone has remarked to me, "Well, the movie's about Spinal Tap, the band, right? They are a real band." Clearly that person is wrong, but the ...

Pros: laugh at this movie and make a buddy

Cons: may be offensive to the humor impaired

Review: There was a time in my life when I had one hard and fast rule: If you don’t think Spinal Tap is funny, you cannot be my friend. At that time I believed that lack of appreciation for such a cinematic masterpiece showed a serious deficit of character, a...

Pros: The humour mixes well with the reality

Cons: I wanted more, More, MORE!

The Bottom Line: "That's pretty. What's it called?" "'Lick my Love Pump.'" Ha!

Review: MY REVIEW OF THE MOVIE PROPER

Director Rob Reiner's 'rockumentary', "This is Spinal Tap", might just be the funniest movie I know. Mostly improvised, it follows what should be the last concert tour of a 20-years past its best-buy date...

Pros: Funny and empathetic as ever, MGM's "Spinal Tap" DVD offers outstanding bonuses, in-character, no less.

Cons: Surely, you jest!

The Bottom Line: See it. Enjoy it. Buy it. Laugh. Cry. Remember.

Review: THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF FLASHBACKS GO US ALL: In one dead-pan featurette on the MGM "Special Edition" DVD of 1984's ground-breaking documentary parody of the fall of an over-the-hill rock band, This is Spinal Tap, there's an "interview" ...

Pros: an all too truthful parody of a touring rock band

Cons: not everyones subject matter

The Bottom Line: a classic satire of an ageing rock bands swansong. Great music and extremely funny.

Review: One of the problems with films that are parodies of a subject is that it requires a certain amount of knowledge of that subject by the viewer. To a large degree this is true of “This Is Spinal Tap”. Whilst some of the humour is based on the sheer ...

Pros: This movie is a "BLAST" not only from the past, but it can make your eardrums bleed

Cons: Not a one...take it for what it is and have fun!

Review: In the tradition of rockumentaries, a genre unknown before the BEATLES, this movie has to rank as one of the top 10 best comedies of all time. I saw it first in 1983, channel surfing on cable. At first taken in, I kept thinking, hey, that guy looks like...

Pros: Unapologetic rock n' roll satire; the actors are actually great musicians

Cons: The introduction by Rob Reiner was a bit lame

The Bottom Line: Required viewing for anybody with a funny bone...and a pulse.

Review: Big Bottom. Sex Farm. Hell Hole. Are these appalling couplets of words descriptions of some seedy, underground nightclubs that house the sleaziest of the sleazy? Or perhaps the working titles of the latest pornographic films to hit ...

Pros: Superb, hilarious send-up of rock-music at its most pretentious

Cons: Some people still don't get the joke

The Bottom Line: So accurate in its idiocy, it's a wonder that similar "real" groups didn't just up and retire

Review: In my humble opinion, This Is Spinal Tap (1984) is one of the funniest movies ever made, all the more so because of the deadpan seriousness with which its minimally talented leads take themselves. The movie is a send-up of rock-music ...

Pros: One of the funniest films ever made.

Cons: People who hate to laugh should stay away.

Review: "This pretentious ponderous collection of religious rock psalms is enough to prompt the question, `What day did the Lord create Spinal Tap, and couldn't he have rested on that day too?'"
-Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) "This Is Spinal...