Could it be that I just didn’t get the joke when it comes to Spinal Tap II: The End Continues? Maybe all that meandering self-indulgence was intentional. Maybe the fact that this sequel to the 1984 comedy spends an enormous chunk of its hour-and-20-minute runtime on cameos from Paul McCartney and Elton John is in itself a meta-commentary on the inherent narcissism of self-produced documentary portraits of musicians?
Or is this merely a delusion created to stomach the fact that a film concocted by a returning Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer – who together essentially birthed the mockumentary genre – could be so startlingly unfunny?
The original film starred Guest, McKean, and Shearer as the fictional members of “one of England’s loudest bands”, stuck teetering between godlike stardom and total obscurity. Its insight into the music industry, and the films that are made about it, was pointed enough to initially offend the likes of Steven Tyler and Martin Scorsese (whose The Last Waltz, about The Band, is a clear point of influence).
In that respect, it’s not a terrible idea to revisit Spinal Tap in 2025, when so much of their world has changed, and the popular image of rock is now Benson Boone doing backflips in a plunging jumpsuit. Yet the problem with The End Continues is that it’s so hermetic that it loses its ability to function as it was intended to. What passes for relevance is a mention that audiences expect musicians to move around more on stage in “a post-K-pop world”.
Here, the Tap have essentially been forced to reunite after Hope Faith (Kerry Godliman), daughter of their late manager Ian Faith (originally played by Tony Hendra, who died in 2021), finds a clause in their contract that demands one more performance.
David St Hubbins (McKean) now writes hold music and jingles for true-crime podcasts. Derek Smalls (Shearer) runs a glue museum. Nigel Tufnel (Guest) is a cheesemaker – which is presented as absurd, begging the question of whether the writers were aware that’s exactly what bassist Alex James did after he left Blur? Reiner once again plays director Marty Di Bergi, who’s here to shoot a follow-up documentary in the hope he can atone for how ungraciously he depicted the band the first time around.
As it turns out, the Tap are a hit on TikTok, in reference to Kate Bush’s unexpected virality after “Running Up That Hill” was featured in Netflix’s Stranger Things. Here’s where I may have missed the joke again – what does it for them is a Garth Brooks cover. Presumably no one from Gen Z was consulted. While the camaraderie between these performers is alive as ever, by losing that kind of specificity, The End Continues is reduced to circular arguments over whether a song has “la”s or “ah”s after the chorus and whether the prop buttocks dangling over the stage should emit a puff of smoke.
Even the pacing feels off, with punchlines either delivered far too late or far too early (oddly enough, it might be McCartney who has the best timing in the film). Then again, could a film in which a band of elder statesmen consider a loose collection of half-baked thoughts to be art itself be a satire of how some music legends like to conduct themselves? Maybe. But then you’d think under those circumstances I’d be laughing more.
Dir: Rob Reiner. Starring: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Rob Reiner. 15, 84 minutes.
‘Spinal Tap II: The End Continues’ is in cinemas from 12 September
