Dear Spinal Tap: Please Knock It Off With The Reunions Already

Christopher R. Weingarten | February 3, 2009 4:00 am

Following their low-end-heavy appearance at hilarious benefit concert Live Earth, metal parodists Spinal Tap have promised their billionth reunion… this time, for another album that’s guaranteed to clog used bins for as long as record stores remain in existence. I know this is important news for fans of fake metal who like their jokes dryer than Tenacious D and are too old to get Metalocalypse, but to the rest of us, Spinal Tap has a long history of not being funny.

OK, obviously, it should go without saying that This Is Spinal Tap is maybe one of the 10 greatest four a.m. movies in existence, somewhere up there with Airplane! and Pootie Tang. It’s a magical movie that makes Fran Drescher look hot and makes Billy Crystal look funny. But after that movie premiered in 1984 and the three hours of extras showed up on bootleg VHS tapes and Criterion DVDs, that was it. That was the last funny thing they did.

Remember the first reunion in 1992? There was the “Bitch School” video, which averaged a good bit every 30 seconds and was probably mostly a chance for these three old perverts to hang with hot chicks under the guise of “parody.”

Then the subsequent concert DVD, which was like the worst moments of McKean/Shearer/Guest comedies, where they circle around a vague sketch of a joke for an hour. Hey—”Potato Republic,” that’s a funny play on words, right?

Then the appearance on The Simpsons, which was mad funny, but we’re betting Jeff Martin wrote all the jokes.

And what about this Volkswagen commercial from 2006? Is the joke that Nigel fell down?

OK, we get it. Rock stars used to be excessive. I mean, we partially have you guys to thank for today’s rock bands being so aware of the goofy shit that they do. But excessive, over-the-top rock stars dinosaur goofballs also stay around waaaay too long. And you guys are looking like Kiss at this point. Quit pretending you’re a band and give us that four and a half-hour bootleg version of the movie on DVD already!

Spinal Tap Plot New Material In 2009 [RS]