Neverending ending: Spinal Tap II is good fan-service but will create few fresh converts

Sometimes, old bands find it hard to play the hits: they want to show they still have some of the old magic, when it comes to producing new material. Spinal Tap’s decades-late encore suffers from this impulse, but all is forgiven in the moments when it just gives us what we want: more time in the company of Smalls, Tufnell and St Hubbins.

I’ve said before, the biggest problem with mockumentaries is that the good ones make it look easy. In 1984, perhaps the Holy Grail ofmockumentaries was unleashed on unsuspecting audiences, and changed the face of modern narrative comedy: This is Spinal Tap.

Built around performers who could inhabit their character like a second-skin, a loosely constructed story was told almost entirely through improvisation. The result was a naturalistic, but extremely funny movie which countless filmmakers would later seek to emulate – while few would ever get close.

The idea you could make a movie like that and it turn out so well makes it sound like this is a genre that is something anyone could have a stab at – even if they don’t have the budget for a big filming team, or knack for writing. But, of course, making its various comedic beats land in this way was not nearly as effortless as it seemed. More than 100 hours of footage were shot – and that was eventually boiled down to just 82 minutes of material, stitched painstakingly together by a heroic trio of editors: Robert Leighton, Kent Beyda, and Kim Secrist.

It might be telling that only one editor, Bob Joyce, was required for the 84 minutes of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.

Looking back at the original, I am sure there are plenty of diehard Tapfans who would give just about anything for an ‘extended’ cut with two extra minutes of footage. Here, though, it is hard to understand where exactly that time went. This film feels longer, but conspicuously also like there is less in it.

The story is a simple, streamlined version of the first outing. All roads lead to a single reunion gig, masterminded by Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman), the daughter of Tap’s original manager Ian Faith. Over the space of two weeks, she takes them to New Orleans to heal the rifts which drove them apart 15 years ago. The structure means there are fewer opportunities for set-pieces, which helped to break up the first film – but also served as important sources of conflict – and one of the biggest problems here is that it feels like little is at stake. The band has assembled, that was the hardest part, and it occurs minutes in. Anything after that is probably not going to matter that much.

To pad the time, the production instead inserts a new character to try and throw a spanner in the works. And the results are horrendous. There isn’t – currently – an advisory label as to how much Chris Addison a film should have, to be considered fit for consumption; but on the basis of Tap II,I will be campaigning for the introduction of such a precautionary measure.

There are toxic levels of Addison here, after he was presumably brought in on the basis of The Thick of It being on his CV. But in that role, Addison is a spineless twirp, being puppeteered by Peter Capaldi – essentially a lead in a gangster film, who is demonstrably evil, but so charismatic that you find yourself rooting for him in spite of yourself. Left to be the puppet-master for himself, as alleged PR-guru Simon Howler, Addison has none of the charisma to counterbalance his bile – leading to a thoroughly unlikeable performance, which takes up precious time with Tap, and ultimately goes nowhere.

Another unwelcome presence is Rob Reiner – returning to direct and to play the in-story director of filmmaker Martin “Marty” Di Bergi. While he is obviously part of the package, to an extent, he seems much more determined to make himself part of proceedings here. While he was more aware of when to back off and let his cast do their thing then in the original, in Tap II, he is bordering on intrusive – engineering conversation constantly, and even making sure his face is poking into the corner of the screen in one crucial moment where he isn’t involved directly.

Perhaps that is intentional. We don’t really know what Di Bergi has been doing for the last 40 years, but if it’s been anything like Reiner’s career trajectory, that’s been a decade of hits, followed by three more of mediocrity at best. Were Di Bergi to be on that kind of a run, he might very well want to insert himself more into this eye-catching reunion. But Reiner may well also have that inclination as a director whose output went off a figurative cliff following 1994’s North. Since this doesn’t crop up in conversation, I’d be inclined to think it was more of the latter.

Not all the evolutions of the characters are unwelcome, though. Returning as Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls respectively, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer each bring the film alive any time they are allowed to interact with each other unmolested.

They are still uniquely Tap: the product of a world in which is only too happy to say yes to anyone who is making money – however hairbrained their idea. Thanks to this, while they were and are fantastic – and marketable musicians – they still mistake themselves as having profound insight on everything else, leading to some rewarding comic set-pieces, where their grand ideas either underwhelm, alienate, or endanger those around them. But on top of this, they are now what is euphemistically described as elder statesmen of rock and roll.

As is the case with the stars now pushing 80 who they are lampooning – most obviously, but not exclusively, Jagger and Richards – this framing suggests levels of peace and wisdom which aren’t generally present. These are characters which still have the same blind-spots as before, it’s just the world has more demonstrably moved beyond their understanding of it by the day. Endearingly, then, Tap often now emulate a gathering of your own elderly relatives – which, considering Ronnie Wood and Paul Weller are famous for having morphed into a pair of British grandmothers, seems especially fitting.

There are, for example, on-going struggles to adapt to modern technology in a social setting. While telephones in years gone by would be in a quiet (and ideally sheltered) nook of the house where you might say personal things without everyone knowing, Guest’s Tufnel reflexively associates a modern smart phone with this. Sitting on the stairs on a video call, metres away from Smalls and St. Hubbins who he is meeting for the first time, he blurts to his concerned partner, “IT’S WEIRD.”  

At the same time, the portability of the technology seems to mean the others are unable to understand when the appropriate time is to interrupt. In a later call, in which Tufnel has been told one of his customers (at the cheese store he runs in his post-tour life) has passed away, St. Hubbins fails to read the situation, and flatly begins talking to him about a musical discussion they were having several hours ago.

Other signifiers of the ageing Tap are out of touch come in relation to their drummer – the only drummer who would agree to play for a band where percussionists spontaneously combust, or sneeze themselves into a coma. Didi Crockett (Valerie Franco) is, as far as we know, the first woman to have played with Tap in a musical sense – and while that was already a thing the Tap of old would probably have struggled with, it is a norm they are now struggling with in a different way.

In hushed tones around the dinner table, after Didi nails her audition, the conversation turns to “how that happens”. While they are utterly supportive of Didi, St. Hubbins in particular drops the clanger that “it’s not natural” a woman should become a drummer – meaning it as a positive, what an incredible thing to overcome, but in a deeply wrong sense. Having been to a family funeral recently, where a lot of people this age gathered, it’s the kind of fantastically tone-deaf sexism coming from a sense of wanting to be ‘nice’ which I encountered on multiple occasions. And while there is never a good kind of sexism, this is kind of comedically sweet – if that makes any sense.

There are also plenty of moments of musical gold supplied by the band – humorous and genuinely cool in equal measures. An endless argument about the progression of a set of chords ultimately leads into a duet with Paul McCartney – a song from Tap’s peaceful 60s era about tea and cakes – during which St. Hubbins repeatedly tries to one-up the fellow front-man he still sees as competition. Meanwhile, Elton John goes all starry-eyed while accompanying the gang on Flower People – before agreeing to belt out Stone Henge in the film’s climactic reunion gig.

This is all great. But the film itself still feels aimless, and fails to build this material into a plot which feels like it still has consequence. A last-ditch attempt to insert some friction into proceedings comes too late, and with too little build-up to make us believe it – before a rushed ending that manages to somehow make a collapsing stone henge feel as though it lacks weight.

Then again, maybe that’s fitting for a film about a rock reunion. A victim of the success of Tap I, it was probably never going to be able to rock like that; to surprise an audience in a way that makes new fans. But for those of us who were already in love with Tap, the little things – bitty though they may be – might just be enough. I caught myself grinning like a moron just at the sight of the band on stage, playing Stone Henge. Sometimes there’s value to playing the hits – and in its brightest moments, Tap II is still a testament to that.