Is Spinal Tap II strictly for the devotees who can recite the exact dimensions of a Stonehenge prop? Probably. But as a card-carrying member of the Tap-heads, I couldn’t care less. Getting eighty more minutes with Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls feels less like a movie and more like a family reunion where everyone is slightly more deaf and significantly more delusional.
The plot kicks off with a brilliant piece of continuity: Hope Faith (a pitch-perfect Kerry Godliman), the daughter of the band’s legendary, cricket-bat-wielding manager Ian Faith. She’s inherited the band’s contract, which is a legal albatross that forces the trio into one final show.
The problem is that Nigel and David won’t speak to each other. They may not even know why. At this point, Nigel owns a cheese-and-guitar shop; David is making music for true-crime podcasts and on-hold messages; and Derek is still into rock operas like Hell Toupee and running a glue museum.
Despite struggling to find a drummer — no one wants to die of misadventure or choking on someone else’s vomit — Didi Crockett (Valerie Franco, whose girlfriend Annie Gordenier also shows up in the movie as her parner) joins up and adds the positivity the band needs as they nevigate growing old, advice from Paul McCartney and nearly murdering Elton John during a performance of “Stonehenge.”
Sadly, live concert footage was filmed at Stonehenge, Wiltshire, for the concert Spinal Tap at Stonehenge: The Final Finale. The project was delayed indefinitely after Rob Reiner, who directed and played director Marty DiBergi, and his wife Michele Singer Reiner were killed.
Seeing Paul Shaffer’s Artie Fufkin still looking for a kick in the ass, Fran Drescher’s Bobbi Flekman still holding it together as a Buddhist and June Chadwick’s Jeanine Pettibone trading her zodiac charts for a nun’s habit made me smile.
I didn’t think too deeply about any of this. I just wanted to laugh and, as always, Tap provides.