No way. That one joke has made it all worthwhile.
8 Likes
I thought the sequel was A Mighty Wind, sort of.
3 Likes
I still see current bands referencing their love of it due to its accuracy. Metal’s a lot smarter in general these days, but touring and bandlife is as ridiculous as ever.
4 Likes
Did this not count as a sequel? (I think it might’ve coincided with the release of Break Like the Wind)
4 Likes
Aye, I was thinking there was something like that along the way.
I also can’t help but think of Blues Brothers 2000, which was just so very, very sad compared to the original. But then The Blues Brothers and This Is Spinal Tap are already very different movies.
In any event, the original movie comes up often enough that there is surely still money to be made.
4 Likes
On that note has there ever been a decent film with the production year in the title?
1 Like
Well, probably not that year at any rate. Blues Brothers 2000, Fantasia 2000, Heavy Metal 2000 etc. didn’t exactly outshine their predecessors. Though at least Godzilla 2000 helped wash away some of the bitter taste of the Roland Emmerich version.
I did find it kind of funny that the first several episodes from the fourth season of South Park had “2000” needlessly appended to the episode titles.
2 Likes
Well I already have an armadillo in my trousers just thinking about the sequel
1 Like
The great thing about the internet is that frequently others have collated things for you
and the answer is, no not really. Closest to “good” is (apparently) Fantasia 2000.
2 Likes
I know this isn’t a sequel in any way, but I’ve always seen it as a spiritual successor.
4 Likes
Spın̈al Tap can be just as relevant today as they were in the 1980s. I just look at all the aging rockers well past their prime in their 70s and 80s somehow continuing to tour, and can’t help but imagine Tap doing the same (all while being blissfully ignorant to how ridiculous they must seem).
6 Likes
The original is one of my favorite movies, and Spinal Tap is legitimately one of my favorite bands of all time. Jesus, where to start?
Every musician that’s ever toured or gigged heavily or just worked as a musician has at least one or two- minimum- Spinal Tap moments where the EXACT SAME THING on screen happened to us that once. The movie is funny for everyone, but to people in the industry, it’s goddamned hysterical and tragic and literally our actual life.
The BEST parody comes from people who have a legitimate love for the thing they’re satirizing- The only examples I’ve ever seen that even come close to Tap are Galaxy Quest and A Mighty Wind- Which featured Tap’s alter egos, the Folksmen.
Speaking of the Folksmen, they appear briefly in the second Tap movie, filmed at Royal Albert Hall. Altogether, there have been three Tap films: This is Spinal Tap (1984), The Return of Spinal Tap (1992), and Back From the Dead (2009)- Plus A Mighty Wind; and four albums: The soundtrack to the original movie, Break Like the Wind (1992), Back From the Dead (2009), and Derek Smalls’ (Harry Shearer in character) solo album Smalls Change: Meditations Upon Ageing (2018). We might also count the Lenny and the Squigtones album, a Laverne & Shirley spinoff that featured Michael McKean as Lenny, and Christopher Guest in his first credited role as Nigel Tuffnel. ALSO: The DVD of the original movie features not only an in-character commentary track, but deleted scenes and alternate takes totaling more runtime than the movie itself.
And here’s the thing: The band writes their own material, and it’s actually GOOD. Not just as pop music with decent hooks, but they’re doing stuff that’s actually musically interesting. The intro to Stonehenge for example, is fully chromatic, going through something like 5 different keys, and other songs are full of surprisingly sophisticated theory and clever references. After releasing Break Like the Wind, they briefly toured- Where they, the joke band, were actually performing live songs they wrote, while opening for top 40 bands that were lip-synching ghost written music.
I fucking love these guys.
14 Likes
They could do 10 sequels but how would they top that?
4 Likes
Hell, just as a music fan and aficionado there’s been many times where I’ve been lost in the bowels of any given venue having one of those “hello Cleveland!” moments.
4 Likes
Now they have $87.50 and $102.32, respectively.
Less court costs and legal fees, of course.
3 Likes
This might be a special case
10 Likes
I hope the sequel lets us know if they ever got around to making “Saucy Jack”.
6 Likes
Exactly! The band was getting second billing to a puppet show in the original, so it would be completely in-character for them to still be touring around miniscule little venues after all of this time. Or maybe tagging along as the opening act on a “Duke Fame” nostalgia tour before being dropped.
4 Likes
(I hope Harry Shearer got paid extra for that episode)
5 Likes
I take your point, but a lot of the appeal of the original was that they were past their prime and out of touch - they can turn that joke up to 11 in this movie, I hope. I’m often disappointed by sequels, especially long dormant ones, but I give this writing (and improv) crew credit for being able to come up with gold. Fingers crossed.
1 Like
