DOUBLE-EDGED URGENT-COMEDY PERFECTION OF 'THIS IS SPINAL TAP'

Rob Reiner's THIS IS SPINAL TAP Year: 1984 Rating: *****

The fictional heavy metal band SPINAL TAP is so legendary that it's sometimes forgotten that Rob Reiner's directorial debut THIS IS SPINAL TAP, written and performed by his old friends Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, was initially a neglected diamond in the rough...

Other than a few exceptions, like Woody Allen's 1969 crime satire TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN and the more befitting RUTLES: ALL YOU NEED IS CASH, the mockumentary device wasn't common when TAP began gaining an immense cult following during the 1980's video boom...

Airplane parody original poster art for THIS IS SPINAL TAP

The original artwork didn't have images of Guest's naively spaced-out lead-guitarist Nigel Tufnel, Michael McKean's moody lead-singer/co-guitarist David St. Hubbins, or Harry Shearer's affable middle-man bassist Derk Smalls, but the colorful painting of a guitar tied in a knot...

Anyone back then knew exactly what that poster was parodying, since AIRPLANE was still a highly revered joke-every-ten-seconds classic... and both the mile-high-disaster and pseudo-rocker satire had a strong-enough central plot-line to rest all the nonstop hilarious moments on...

Christopher Guest, Michael McKean & Harry Shearer in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

American actor/musicians portray a British band that's been through decades of genre-changes and a multitude of dead drummers, and it's really a character-driven comedy with two polar-opposite leads, particularly narrowed into Christopher Guest's passive pawn to McKean's straight-mannish alpha...

Who's comparably the more peevish and unlikable opposite Guest's scene-stealing deadpan guitarist... especially during the second act when his Yoko Ono-inspired girlfriend joins the fledgling tour, documented by director Rob Reiner as passively inquisitive/lowrent filmmaker Marti DiBergi, ultimately editing the comeback-tour-revival into the hatchet-job hit-piece we're experiencing...

Tony Hendra, Michael McKean & June Chadwick in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

A band breaking apart, and, like moments of The Beatles 11th hour expose LET IT BE, there's a fair share of bickering and bantering...  and in that, the most effective cast member wasn't a fellow improvisational comic actor but an improvisational comedy writer and rock music journalist...

Enter Tony Hendra as steadfast/stalwart yet mercurial/explosive band manager Ian Faith, eventually struggling to get the band through even the smallest venues cancelling: as his plight of possibly losing his job is almost as important as the band losing their decade-long camaraderie/friendship...

Christopher Guest, Tony Hendra & Michael McKean in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

The unlucky underdogs-in-peril moments are the most entertaining: their in-between-gig struggles coinciding perfectly with the catchy live performances... leading to McKean's/Hubbins' manipulatively punctuating girlfriend June Chadwick's Jeanine in an ongoing heated battle against Hendra/Faith's control of the band...

Making Hendra and Chadwick the epitome of a supporting cast, doing the thankless expository and sometimes dramatic heavy-lifting alongside the nonstop on-and-off-stage hilarity...

Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest and Michael McKean in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

In any genre, there are only two things that even the greatest actors cannot fake: a solid golf swing and the ability to play the guitar (or seem like you're actually playing)...

And how co-guitarists McKean and Guest and barometer bassist Shearer were able to tone down their genuinely masterful skills is what makes the band itself seem more real than fictional — and at this point, THIS IS SPINAL TAP is really more documentary than mockumentary.

Christopher Guest and Rob Reiner in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

Christopher Guest in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

Tony Hendra in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

June Chadwick in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

Fred Willard in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

Howard Hesseman in THIS IS SPINAL TAP with RJ Parnell and Paul Shortino

June Chadwick and Michael McKean in THIS IS SPINAL TAP

Paul Benedict, David Kaff, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean & Tony Hendra in This is Spinal Tap