Decidedly On The Clever Side Of The Line: This is Spinal Tap Special Edition DVD

MY REVIEW OF THE MOVIE PROPER

Director Rob Reiner's 'rockumentary', "This is Spinal Tap", might just be the funniest movie I know. Mostly improvised, it follows what should be the last concert tour of a 20-years past its best-buy date heavy metal band. The tour, dubbed "Tap Across America", should have been called "Upholding Murphy's Law", for anything that can go wrong usually does: band member mutinies, technological problems, navigation problems, problems with accommodations, lukewarm crowds, and death, all follow Tap from coast to coast. Michael McKean plays David St. Hubbins, lead singer, rhythm guitarist, possessor of silly hair. Christopher Guest plays Nigel Tufnel, David's life long writing partner, and the band's temperamental lead guitarist. Harry Shearer is Derek Smalls, the Chewbacca-looking bassist. Reiner plays Marty DiBergi, the filmmaker charged with documenting their quick slip into irrelevance. These four men -- the artistic forces behind the film -- are supported by an SNL-inspired rogues gallery of performers, each doing their best to get in the Tap's way. Watch for hilarious pre-stardom cameo appearances by Billy Crystal, Dana Carvey, Bruno Kirby, Paul Shaffer, Fran Drescher, Anjelica Huston, Fred Willard, and Howard Hessman.

So I've seen "Spinal Tap" about a dozen times by this point. That's one more than 11, for those of you scoring at home (Sorry, just trying to get that obligatory reference out of the way early). What amazes me most about the movie is that even though the jokes are cultural relics by this point, and you can see (remember) them coming from a mile away, they still elicit an honest to goodness chuckle. You know that when the title card reads "Cleveland, Ohio" that it's time for the Tap to get lost in the basement on their way to the stage. You know that as Nigel diagrams a prop for the song 'Stonehenge', that when the prop shows up it will be 18 inches tall instead of 18 feet. And you know that when the band breaks into 'Rock 'n' Roll Creation', Derek will get stuck in his space pod. You know all these things. And yet you wait for the punchline. And when the punchline happens, you laugh. Staying power like that is a sign of a well-constructed joke.

What surprised me about the movie when I saw it recently, was that amongst a sea of cartoonish caricatures, McKean and Guest (and to a lesser extent, Shearer) give strikingly real performances. St. Hubbins and Tufnel (the band's "poetic visionaries") in their hands come off as complete characters. McKean manages to show some of David's manic anguish at being relegated to the deletion bin, as well as his pride in having created a prosperous musical relationship. Guest's Tufnel is lovably dim-witted for the most part (the 'mini sandwich' scene is good evidence of this), but his jealousy when David's girlfriend shows up is tangible and quite touching. I don't think these two actors get the credit they deserve for their textured performances (look at me talking about "textured performances" during a 'Spinal Tap' review, but there you have it).

Like I said before, the other characters barely escape two-dimensionality, but do provide a solid and realistic backdrop. Harry Shearer's Derek Smalls has some shining low-key moments, my favourite being his stunt at the airport metal-detector, where we as the audience find out just what's causing that bulge in his pants.

What makes this movie the classic that it is, besides the unmatched quality of the humour, are the songs. Never mind the fact that they are all outstanding parodies of heavy metal's penchant for primitive double entendres (hello AC/DC). The most astounding thing to me is that they were written and performed by the actors themselves. And they show a real talent for diversity, ably shifting from youthful skiffle music ("All the Way Home"), to watered-down psychedelia ("(Listen to the) Flower People"), to stoopid hard rock (the triple-bass workout "Big Bottom" is my favourite), to… um… free jazz ("Jazz Odyssey"). It's hardly fair that these men get to be both this funny and this musical at the same time. And the fact that the boys can play their instruments elevates the concert footage above other instances of actors-as-musicians. I find it terribly distracting when the fingers on the fretboard don't match the tones coming from the amp.

So "Tap" is good. We all knew that. What I'm here to say is that "Tap" stays good, no matter how many times you've seen it.

MY REVIEW OF THE THIS IS SPINAL TAP: SPECIAL EDTION DVD

My favourite part of this DVD has got to be the animated graphics that pop up between the different sections. A shining example of which is the title card for the "Special Features" section, which emerges from the insides of Derek's trousers, wrapped in tin foil.

Running a close second is the audio commentary. Messrs. Guest, McKean and Shearer don't do a typical cast commentary. Instead, in character as their Tap alter egos, perform a 'Mystery Science Theatre 3000'-style vivisection on the film, and the people involved in its making. Director Marty DiBergi, they now say, was a manipulative backstabber. Manager Ian Faith was a thief and a liar. Keyboardist Viv Savage was a drooling buffoon and an unconvincing lip syncher. Even the boys themselves can't stay out of the way of the pointed barbs:

Smalls: [spotting Nigel in once scene, dressed in canary-coloured pants] Hello! Yellow Trousers. What was that idea?
St. Hubbins: Well, he had taken up golf.

The track's best running joke: Every bit player or background extra is thought to have passed on ("See the Philippino guy in the background? He's dead…"). Then, typically, when they get to the scene by Elvis' graveside, they quite obviously remark, "He's dead", before launching into the off-key harmonies of 'Heartbreak Hotel'. This level of necrophilia shows that after 20 years, as David says, the boys have too much perspective.

The commentary is like another mini-film, pasted on top of the original. It's a hilarious little document, providing as many laughs as the film itself. Obviously all improvised, it shows that the Tap are still very much in touch with their vivid characters.

The rare outtakes section, that, when watched in one sitting, forms another little alternate movie. There's over an hour's worth of material here, and it's all golden. But, surprisingly, it's rarely funny. Rather, we get a different glimpse into the character's lives: Derek (who gets a lot more airtime here) was dealing with the painful fallout from a messy divorce; we meet David's long lost son, in a very real and very uncomfortable little scene; and we see what Nigel was up to during his hiatus from the band. I found it fascinating, and it furthered my own notion (touched upon above, in the movie-proper review) that the Tap are more than just cartoonish caricatures. They are meant to be living breathing people with real lives. Sure, they are funny. But the humour, oftentimes, comes from the sadness of real life. The outtakes show this side of them nicely.

Additional features include a press conference during their early "Flower People" days that offers Tap's most direct spoofing of the Beatles (Q: "How do you find the girls on tour?" A: "Turn left at the men"), a brief and grainy clip of the Tap on the Joe Franklin Show, and three cheesy (pun intended) commercials for some kind of pizza pastry product called "Rock and Rolls". All, while not enhancing the movie watching experience in the slightest, are the kind of detailed miscellanies that make Tap so intriguing.