Box office returns upon its release in 1984 are best described as modest, but the stature of This Is Spinal Tap skyrocketed over time, and today it’s regularly placed high on charts of all-time greatest film comedies.
Our heroes are Tapping into America again in an all-new yarn, although references to the first film are many (brief cameos by supporting characters, mentions of erstwhile deceased drummers) and only go a little way to compensate for the worrying dearth of fresh Grade A gags.
In tandem with a reunion album called Break Like the Wind, the 1992 straight-to-video release The Return of Spinal Tap chronicled the group’s sold-out concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the songs interspersed with comic vignettes.
View oEmbed on the source websiteAgeing is key in the new film; if we take the timeline literally the musicians are now in their eighties (“when the candles cost more than the cake”), and are reconvening for a last hurrah, having not spoken to each other for 15 years.
She’s helped/hindered by Chris Addison as a manipulative concert promoter called Simon - a thinly-disguised hybrid of genuine music biz executive Simons Cowell and Fuller, who declares “my superpower is that I don’t give a s**t about music” and lectures the group about where they stand in “a post K-pop world”.
A huge part of the charm of This Is Spinal Tap was down to when the actors weren’t working from a script, bombarding viewers with great gags and throwaway lines cooked up in improvised scenes.
In a nod to the group’s status as a “legacy act” they cross paths with infinitely more enduring veterans Paul McCartney and Elton John, in what looks suspiciously like a publicity gambit on the part of the filmmakers, and sees real life awkwardly encroaching on the otherwise entirely fictional Tap universe.
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The Conjuring: Last Rites review – Enjoyable chiller lets franchise rest in peaceDownton Abbey: The Grand Finale review – A pleasant stroll with characters you know and loveConsequently, rather than enriching or adding to the Tap pantheon, the movie is best approached as an exercise in nostalgia that relies on an audience with a ready-made, unwavering affection for the band.
Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is in UK cinemas from Friday 12th September 2025.
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