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Depicting a Listless Rock Reunion, Spinal Tap II Feels Too Real

By Jesse Hassenger  |  September 11, 2025 | 9:28am
Movies Reviews spinal tap
Depicting a Listless Rock Reunion, Spinal Tap II Feels Too Real
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This Is Spinal Tap is a comedy of such awe-inspiring invention and formal originality, it’s only fitting that its follow-up would sidestep many legacy-sequel pitfalls, blazing its own trail of fresher, weirder problems. Comedy sequels are a particularly tough nut to crack, prone to redrawing classic characters as catchphrase-spouting caricatures. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues does not suffer from this problem. If anything, David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), the core members of the fictional heavy metal rock group Spinal Tap, feel even more like real people, even (or especially) at their most ridiculous. Some of this is due to the groundwork laid by the first film, with its uncommonly sustained deadpan, enhanced by its mockumentary format. Some of it is due to the discipline of the three central actors, who may not be actual rock stars, but sure know how to think like them. And some of it is the way Spinal Tap itself has been integrated into the culture over the years, with “real” albums, tours, occasional guest appearances (they’re in a classic Simpsons episode, alongside Shearer’s many beloved characters), and side projects. The fake folk-music doc A Mighty Wind may not have any formal connection to the Spinal Tap legacy, but its comic verisimilitude somehow enhances it further.

Still, as fun as Christopher Guest’s subsequent mockumentaries have been, none have quite lived up to This Is Spinal Tap. Was the missing ingredient Rob Reiner, who directed, co-wrote, and co-starred in the first film, playing documentarian Marty DiBergi? His immediately subsequent output might have suggested so: He went on to direct The Princess Bride (with a plum role for Guest) and When Harry Met Sally…, and several less comedic classics. The Spinal Tap sequel, though, falls more in line with later-period Reiner, the stuff where he seemed to know the words to making mainstream studio pictures but no longer the music.

The music is and isn’t the problem with Spinal Tap II. The songs are as believable as ever, because many of them have existed for years, becoming a parodic equivalent of classics in their own right. It’s that sense of familiarity, with the songs and the characters, that weakens the sequel. It begins promisingly enough, with the news that the band hasn’t played together in 15 years, but has one remaining gig required on an arcane contract that has been passed down from their old manager to his daughter. The movie has a lot of fun catching up with the band members in their new professions: Derek, for example, runs a museum showing off different sorts of glue. (Excuse me: it’s “The New Museum of Glue.”) David composes background music for podcasts. Nigel runs a cheese shop, daftly explaining the guitar-to-cheese exchange rate.

Yet structurally, something is amiss. Despite a mysterious rift, the band agrees to reunite for their contractual obligation, and as the movie goes on, it never really develops past that tentative agreement, killing time until the big show. A quick countdown to Tap’s combination reunion and finale – most of the film is set in the 10 days leading up to the gig – should provide tension, but somehow undermines it instead. The movie gets momentarily occupied with business that is, somewhat distractingly, not stuff typically figured out five or six days before the show (like merchandising), while the band members mostly sit around the studio and watch as celebrity guests drop by. Hey, it’s Sir Paul McCartney! Good for a few chuckles, sure, as David badmouths Sir Paul in a subsequent interview. But following a lengthy and not especially funny drummer-audition sequence, the purposes of the band’s rehearsals become muddier. Why are celebs popping in to fiddle around with a band that’s canonically (and comedically) been depicted as sort of second-rate? And, wait, is the band trying to write new songs for the one-off concert happening in a week? That doesn’t make much sense, but then again, there’s not much comedy in Spinal Tap mildly rehearsing a bunch of songs that have become nearly as canonized as the real thing. But don’t worry, the movie shows that anyway.

A peculiar mismatch emerges: Spinal Tap II doesn’t much resemble a proper documentary, sticking to the framework of the 41-year-old original without the precise timing or any novel textures, while its subjects very much resemble a real band – to the point of not being all that funny. The satire has leaked away, and the poignancy the movie tries to pump back in is no substitute, especially because the big rift between David and Nigel amounts to almost nothing. The movie makes some gestures toward the idea that these childhood friends stubbornly refuse to engage with each other emotionally unless they’re playing music, but little comes of it. It’s like a subplot from one of Guest’s weaker mockumentaries given its own spinoff.

The actors can still verbally riff in-character; presumably much of the dialogue was improvised here, as before. Let’s hope so, anyway; that’s at least a workable excuse for the increasing amounts of dead air between the occasional laugh-out-loud line. Beyond a handful of vaguely contemporary references – podcasts; crypto; Stormy Daniels – there’s little sense of the present in Spinal Tap II, not even of the band being particularly out of touch with it. It’s been four decades since the first film! Shouldn’t their resentments be pettier, their epic reconvening more desperate? Reiner ultimately doesn’t seem interested in even pretending to savage the mercenary nature of a past-prime reunion, probably because he’s spearheading one himself.

Director: Rob Reiner
Writers: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Rob Reiner, Harry Shearer
Starring: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner, Valerie Franco
Release Date: September 12, 2025

Jesse Hassenger is associate movies editor at Paste. He also writes about movies and other pop-culture stuff for a bunch of outlets including A.V. Club, GQ, Decider, the Daily Beast, and SportsAlcohol.com, where offerings include an informal podcast. He also co-hosts the New Flesh, a podcast about horror movies, and wastes time on social media under the handle @rockmarooned.

 
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