My Classic Summer: This is Spinal Tap

This is Spinal Tap is one of the most celebrated mockumentaries of all time, and for good reason.  The film uses its genre to perfect comedic effect, providing a suitably serious context in which the comedy's stranger stretches are naturalized, thereby enhancing the jokes and making each scene all the funnier.  Comedies today rarely reach the soaring humorous heights of This is Spinal Tap, and I have a hunch as to why.  While comedies today often cast broad nets, using pop culture references, non sequiturs, excessive vulgarity, and a variety of sources for their humor, This is Spinal Tap is much more comedically focused, finding the humor in its subject matter.

By mining the world of rock and roll, and not looking elsewhere for laughs, This is Spinal Tap manages to string together an unending run of jokes and gags that hit the mark, largely because they're thematically linked.  Nothing feels out of place, because the film celebrates the world it's investigating and satirizing rather than looking for humor wherever it can be found.  It's a refreshing precision that, I suspect, helps to make the film more rewatchable than most comedies.  This is smart, pinpoint humor that I imagine will elicit roars of laughter on subsequent watches to rival those I was laugh-vomiting on this first go-through.

Even with its aged aesthetics, This is Spinal Tap is still timely and relevant, perhaps even more so today than when it was made.  Its band of slightly washed-up, aging rockers echoes bands that are still going strong today (such as the Rolling Stones), and the impressive number of members who have been in the band at some point (37 and counting for Spinal Tap) is a familiar parade to classic rock fans.  Some of the film's best physical gags come from technical difficulties with gimmicky set pieces on stage, which look simple compared to the lavish devices used by Lady Gaga or Katy Perry today, but rival their theatricality in their ridiculous design and fumbled execution.

The film also pays fun homage to the history of rock and roll, whether it's the band visiting Elvis's grave and attempting a harmonized rendition of "Heartbreak Hotel," comparing the band's provocative album artwork with the Beatles' White Album, or singing the hilarious "Big Bottom," paying obvious homage to Queen's "Fat-Bottomed Girls."  The band even has its own Yoko serving as a wedge between its two creative geniuses, and I image that those better-versed in rock and roll history glean even more subtle nods during the film.

When comedy and music intersect, it's nice if the music is actually good, and that's the case here.  While "Big Bottom" plays as more a of a joke than a song, it, along with all of the other songs the band performs, are very listenable, and most of them are great.  The concert sequences are often over-the-top, but when considered alongside an actual rock documentary like the wonderful Anvil! The Story of Anvil, it's sometimes easy to forget that Spinal Tap isn't a real band, so richly colored is their history, so full of great tunes is their catalogue.

Of course, the film wouldn't work without its great cast.  Rob Reiner, who directed and co-wrote the film, also stars as the documentary's director, and he makes a great straight man to the more colorful personalities that populate the band.  However, the cast is subdued, none of them acting like they're in a comedy, which is a large part of what makes the movie so damned funny.  Gags like getting stopped at a metal detector or having trouble getting up onstage after a lying-down guitar riff could easily play like silly slapstick bits, but in the capable hands and straight faces of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and the rest, This is Spinal Tap lands as one of the most consistently funny, well-developed comedies I've ever seen.

Below, watch the great scene at Graceland.