This brilliantly crafted and completely on-target satire of the rock 'n' roll industry is filmed in mock documentary style.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 6, 2024

This now stands as one of the premier cult movies of all time, an honor no one saw coming back in ’84.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 18, 2024

Rob Reiner’s mockumentary deserves plaudits for the British accents alone.

| Aug 29, 2023

The hilariousness here is unending.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 24, 2021

Little riffs of comic genius can be heard amidst the heavy-metal cacophony of This is Spinal Tap...

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 22, 2020

Documenting the licks and antics of a real band is one thing. Building a movie around a fake one is a challenge of a different order. The key, as Spinal Tap proved, is to fabricate a band that looks, acts and sounds at least as good as the real thing.

| Oct 18, 2019

This is Spinal Tap is hilarious to everyone who's not a musician. Because as ridiculous and perverse as Rob Reiner's heavy metal mockumentary gets, the slim, 82-minute comedy gnaws at more truths than any other rock 'n' roll biopic put to celluloid.

| Original Score: A | Mar 2, 2019

Reiner, with McKean, Guest and Harry Shearer, have done a great job in creating and portraying characters that are dimwitted, cliched and yet oddly endearing.

| Oct 23, 2018

Yes Nigel, you did go to 11. Where would cinematic comedy be if you hadn't?

| Original Score: A+ | Mar 3, 2014

Consistently funny, with sheer brilliant turns from every performer on the cast...

| Jan 19, 2013

Returning to Spinal Tap always brings with it a pronounced sense of discovery, a freshness that is uncommon with movies generally and unspeakably rare in a comedy.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 18, 2012

[VIDEO] Although examples of the mockumentary genre existed before "Spinal Tap" this heavy metal comedy is considered an epitome of cinematic satire.

| Original Score: A+ | Apr 14, 2011

If you didn't know this was a fake film, you could easily believe it's real.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Mar 2, 2011

...a sporadically amusing but all-too-uneven piece of work...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Feb 13, 2011

Hilarious, ribald, drug-filled rock send-up.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 1, 2011

The original suffers upon review simply because its novelty has worn off. But being the first mainstream feature of its kind, it deserves due reverence.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 30, 2010

The story of an embarrasingly inept heavy-metal band called Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner's film set the mockumentary standard that has come to define much of modern screen comedy. [Blu-ray]

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 28, 2009

For music biz insiders, This Is Spinal Tap is a vastly amusing satire of heavy metal bands.

| Mar 26, 2009

Scores an 11 (out of 10) for sheer inspired lunacy but it's the writers' unexpected fondness for their subject matter that puts the film in a class all its own.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 18, 2008

For all its japes and jokes, the movie is really about exhaustion of the spirit: sitting in a bleak hotel suite at 4 a.m. with the bad taste of last night in the mouth and the feeling that tomorrow will not be a better day.

| Aug 19, 2008