Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)
Directed by: Rob Reiner
Premise: A sequel to 1984’s This is Spinal Tap. Four decades later, the band reunites for a farewell concert.
What Works: The key strength of This is Spinal Tap was its core cast. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer played the members of Spinal Tap and Rob Reiner starred as the documentary filmmaker Martin DiBergi. The interactions between the band members and between the musicians and the documentarians were comedy gold. Spinal Tap II brings back all the key players and some of the supporting actors from the first film. The exchanges between the actors still have the poetic idiocy that worked so well the first time around and the jokes come steadily. Nearly every scene has a great line. Spinal Tap II does what a legacy sequel should; it revisits the characters and recaptures what audiences liked about the first film while also accounting for the passage of time. The opening catches up with the band members and gives each of them a fitting and funny backstory. They reunite to do a farewell show and Spinal Tap II is about aging and mortality. It gets beyond just making old man jokes. There is a dark undercurrent to Spinal Tap II and the filmmakers confront aging and mortality and the legacy of the original picture. The new film also takes aim at the contemporary music industry through a sleezy concert promoter played by Chris Addison.
What Doesn’t: This is Spinal Tap is one of the most popular and most influential films ever made. The sequel does not quite measure up to its predecessor but that was unlikely and maybe impossible. The original Spinal Tap is a favorite of many people but it was especially endeared to musicians who identified with the difficulties of touring. A lot of Spinal Tap II takes place in the studio. The film lacks conflict and it’s never as convincing as a pseudo-documentary. There are a lot of cameos, so many that it becomes a bit distracting. Paul McCartney and Elton John get something to do but few of the other appearances are used productively. The parade of famous faces feels like name dropping. The release of Spinal Tap II coincides with a glut of musical pictures including documentaries and biopics, many of them about bands from the 1970s and 80s. A lot of those films stoke the musician’s egos and exist to spike the value of the band’s music catalogue. Spinal Tap II misses an opportunity to lampoon that specific trend.
Disc extras: The 4K Blu-ray disc includes deleted scenes and a trailer.
Bottom Line: Spinal Tap II is not the classic that its predecessor was but this is a good legacy sequel. It revisits what was so appealing about the original film without feeling redundant and Spinal Tap II is consistently funny. It makes for a fitting but melancholy sendoff for Rob Reiner’s career.
Episode: #1079 (December 21, 2025)