If you’re the audience for “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” you know it. And the movie knows it, too.
Directed by Rob Reiner, the filmmaker behind the original 1984 “This is Spinal Tap,” is behind the camera again here, and reprises his role as nosy but easily flummoxed filmmaker Marti DeBergi (a riff on Martin Scorsese, who was onscreen questioning The Band throughout his 1978 documentary “The Last Waltz“). The lads are here, too—minus a drummer, of course. They need one because they’re preparing for a one-night-only reunion concert after 15 years of not playing together.
We eventually learn the reason why, but it’s not that important. This is a warm, comfortable, at times appealingly gentle and subtle comedy, considering that its highlight involves a giant butt. It’s barely a movie, if we’re being honest. It’s more like 65 or so minutes of goofing around followed by a rather brief and not terribly successful concert. But I don’t think anyone who likes this material will care. Spinal Tap’s most famous and beloved work is the first film, and its second most famous is the outtakes from that movie.
There have been a lot of legacy sequels in recent years, where well-established characters return to their roles after ten or twenty years or more, and we’re simultaneously introduced to new characters that presumably will take over as the leads. One of the most admirable aspects of this movie is that it is not really interested in legacy, and even less interested in mythologizing itself. It’s just a mockumentary about three old guys putting aside their lifelong complaints and grudges, remembering what they always liked about each other, and playing the hits. They’re only doing this because Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) learned that an arena had suddenly become available due to a cancellation. (It was originally booked by “An Evening with Stormy Daniels.”) That the arena is actually, really, truly named The Smoothie King Arena is, um, the cherry on top of the smoothie, or something? Very Spinal Tap, in any case.
It’s fun finding out what happened to the band during the interim, which was somewhere between a hiatus and an unofficial breakup. Nigel and his wife are focused on dairy farming. However, he has continued to play in private and is eager to show off his incredible collection of guitar pedals, which are mounted on a trio of connected panels and controlled by a master pedal. Each produces a unique sound, such as a “man singing through a duck,” and a screeching, whiny, feedback-ish noise that makes bandmate David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) look as if his head is about to detonate. The decades-long and still ongoing catfight between Nigel and David is the closest thing to a through-line in “Spinal Tap II,” and it gives McKean and Guest a chance to lob snide comments at each other, something they do brilliantly. (When Nigel insists that he can’t hear an element in one of David’s new songs that he’s incredibly attached to, David growls, “You can’t hear it over the sound of your mind snapping shut.”)
Much of the first part of the film is about the search for new drummer. Nobody wants the gig because, as we all know, everyone who’s ever taken the job has quickly died. (Appropriately, the number of behind-the-kit casualties now stands at eleven.) Questlove, one of many big-name cameo players, is interviewed via Zoom but politely declines because he has a colonoscopy scheduled that day. They find the perfect choice in Didi (Valerie Franco), a skinny young woman with a sunny disposition and fabulous tattoos who plays with explosive joy, even when blindfolded. Bass player Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) is smitten and wonders if they could not just play together but play together, wink-wink. It’s to the movie’s credit that it doesn’t entertain the possibility, and instead turns it into a comment on Derek’s delusional belief that he’s timelessly sexy, so that the joke’s on him even before Didi’s girlfriend shows up at the studio.
As was the case in the original movie, the music industry is the only thing resembling a villain. But the lads are so far removed from cultural relevance that the stakes are low here, too—and once again, the movie knows it. Concert promoter Simon Howler (Chris Addison) admits that he not only has zero interest in or knowledge of music, but is medically incapable of processing it. His only client of note is a K-pop band that “identifies as Korean” despite being Nicaraguan. Nevertheless, Simon asserts control over Spinal Tap and tries to micromanage their show, even assigning them a physical fitness trainer so that they won’t just sit on stools through the concert looking vaguely put-out. John Michael Higgins, a regular in the many ensemble, semi-improvised movies that Guest has directed, plays the fitness instructor, Bob Kipness of Kipness Fitness. The regimen includes a conga line.
There are other supporting performances worth savoring, including brief returns by Fran Drescher as Bobbi Flekman, chief of artist relations for Polymer Records, and Paul Schaffer as the label’s former promotions guy, Artie Fufkin; and full-on supporting turns by Elton John and Paul McCartney as themselves. John is not asked to do much but be cheerful and perform. He’s a treat to hear, as always. But McCartney, who was always at ease with scripted material and has keen comic timing, gives a rich performance as “himself.” One of the best moments in the movie is a reaction shot of him listening to the band during practice and making a face that could best be described as, “somebody passed gas, and I haven’t figured out who yet.” And of course there’s pleasure to be had in the details, like Derek’s “DOES IT LOOK INFECTED” t-shirt, and an appearance by legendary real-life music photographer Henry Diltz, who re-launches Spinal Tap by having them precisely recreate a famous album cover…by a different band.
Again, it’s important to know that this is less of a fully satisfying movie than an addendum, or an extended piece of long-delayed bonus material. As a comedic confrontation with the inevitability of aging and death, it’s no “Jackass Forever.” But it’s funny and a wee bit poignant, and the main trio has the good taste not to ask us to feel too deeply about three guys whose chief appeal is that they’re miserable and petty and witheringly sarcastic and don’t try to hide it. They’ve aged not like wine, but perhaps like the cheese that Nigel now sells, though not the stinky kind that he loves most.
