Amazon.com Customer Reviews
 Rated 5 out of 5!
This one goes up to eleven...
Christopher Guest is probably the most brilliant comedy director living, and *This Is Spinal Tap* is one of the the most perfect examples of dead-pan humor around. Some of the laughs are subtle (the obnoxious limo driver, the controlling girl friend, the dim-witted bass guitarist played by Guest himself) and some are howling out loud raucous. Anyone who isn’’t in stitches by the "Stonehenge" sequence probably needs to have his or her pulse checked to make sure death hasn’’t intervened.Perhaps they’’ve spontaneously combusted or choked on vomit...  Rated 2 out of 5
"Dozens of people spontaneously combust each year."
Rob Reiner’’s "This Is Spinal Tap" is a cult film that truly does contain many moments of manic inspiration. However, its premise outshines its execution. While its fictional documentary format is novel, the film itself is only partially successful. There are several sequences that make you smile but precious few sequences that produce any laugh-out-loud moments. In the end, "This is Spinal Tap" is a form over substance film.Filmmaker Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) makes the band Spinal Tap the subject of a documentary. The band is on their first American tour in six years and counts among its members David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and Mick Shrimpton (R.J. Parnell). Nothing really goes as planned on the tour as fans don’’t turn up for an autograph session, their album "Smell the Glove" has trouble making it into stores, difficulties arise in the design of a stage prop, and a concert stop is scheduled for a military hanger. Yet with all this chaos erupting around them, the band members remain oblivious to their plight. "This Is Spinal Tap" is a film that becomes more and more strained as it goes on. The fictional documentary joke starts to wear thin after the first initial chuckles. The acting is great and the cameos by Fran Drescher, Paul Shaffer, Anjelica Huston, and Fred Willard are amusing but there is little energy to help sustain the film for its 82-minute running time. "This Is Spinal Tap" is not funny enough to be a successful comedy and not clever enough to be a successful satire. The film is merely adequate and, unlike the band itself which is saved at the end by their Japanese fans, is never salvaged before it concludes. - Rated 5 out of 5!
This movie is awesome
This is the first movie that showed to me that Christopher Guest-- and all of his players-- are great. This movie could be watched a gazillion times and still be funny. It’’s one of only a few DVDs in my collection, and it’’s one of my most prized.
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