Spending Time with Spinal Tap (Again)

(Originally published September 22, 2025)

I was thinking about which person I’ve never met has brought me the most joy, and it’s probably Christopher Guest. This starts with Waiting for Guffman, a movie my dad showed me because Guest’s character, Corky St. Clair, was, in mannerisms, the spitting image of my uncle. Guffman is my favorite comedy, and my most often quoted. But the whole Guest mockumentary cinematic universe just delights me, and This is Spinal Tap sits just behind Guffman among them.

Which means I’m the target audience for Spinal Tap 2, which came out early this month and is already disappearing from theaters because basically no one went to see it. That makes me sad because Spinal Tap 2, which I saw with my kids yesterday, made me happy. And I don’t mean I enjoyed it, or that I laughed during it, though both are true. I mean that, while watching it, I felt genuinely happy. David, Nigel, Derek, and Marty are such wonderful and authentic characters that spending time with them again was like visiting old friends.

That said, I understand why the critics were lukewarm towards the movie, but their lukewarmness is, I’d argue, the result of not approaching Spinal Tap 2 the way it intends to be approached. An online friend, in reviewing it, wrote, “It feels more like reunion bonus content for the original than a proper movie in its own right, but that's okay.” It is okay. In fact, it’s probably the only right way to handle a Spinal Tap reunion, given the distance between the last film and this one.

There’s an earned self-indulgence to Spinal Tap 2. Three of the four members of its creative core—Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Rob Reiner—are in the 70s. Harry Shearer is 81. All four have had wildly successful careers since This is Spinal Tap debuted in 1984. The characters they created went from making fun of rock and roll culture to becoming a central part of it, the way The Godfather shaped the Mafia. The cameos in Spinal Tap 2, and they’re very famous cameos from musicians who are themselves part of rock’s pantheon, have an air of giddiness about getting to hang out with the guys from Spinal Tap.

But it’s less a movie than the first one, and more a hangout session. Most of the movie takes place in a single location, an Airbnb in New Orleans where the band practices before their one-night reunion concert. Gone are the set pieces of the first, replaced by visits from friends. And that’s what this movie is, and why I think it works even when so many critics say it doesn’t. Given their ages, there’s no second career for the band to tell the story of. Really nowhere new and exciting to go. It’s not really a sequel. That’s not the point. The point is that, somehow (and that somehow has to do with lawsuits and finally winning back the rights to their movie ), David and Nigel and Derek and Marty get to have a reunion and another show and an opportunity to catch up. And we, as fans, as people who love these characters, get the same. It’s an indulgence, and it’s for the fans, and it’s for the characters, and that’s enough.

Because the result is warm, and comforting, and nostalgic. And funny. It doesn’t stand alone, because it’s not intended to. It’s a coda. And if it’s the last mockumentary Christopher Guest gives me, it’s a fitting end. I can’t believe it actually happened, and I love that it did.