Film · Embassy · 1984
Pass it on
This Is Spinal Tap
33Leave it.
Funny about a vain band, and nobody in it is embarrassed enough to change.
Take controlThis scores 33. This Is Spinal Tap cannot be blocked by name on this shelf. The lock is the phone. Block it
The review
The amps go to eleven. That's the joke, and it's also the whole mind of the band. A fake documentary trails them while drummers keep dying and nobody learns a thing. The comedy is vanity and the road. They aren't evil. They're unembarrassed. A manager and a girlfriend are stuck being the adults in a business run by boys.
Watch it when you need to laugh at swagger and can hear a death gag without repeating it meanly at dinner. The band never improves, and the movie doesn't fake a lesson to tidy that up. You'll recognize somebody from a band you liked too much. You aren't asked to save him. That's why it's funny, and why it isn't useful on a night you wanted an example.
Journal
Keep This Is Spinal Tap in the record.
No house has filed a sentence for this yet.
Live Historic number 33. Yours can differ.
The glance
Household and Piety and Courage and Republic and Temperance and Stewardship are the thin ones.
Is a marriage, a parent, or a child a real life here, or just a prop?
This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.
Consider this
A Hard Day's Night
46 instead of 33
A Hard Day's Night is still a comedy film, and it scores 46 instead of 33. What you gain is stewardship: A house can inherit a picture of friends doing a job, and the songs, and nothing worse.
The eight
- 6Industry
The band is a business, badly run, and a manager is doing the adult work.
- 3Household
A girlfriend acts as an adult; the band cannot hold anything like a household.
- 2Piety
No scruple interrupts them, because embarrassment never arrives to stop a thing.
- 2Courage
They risk nothing they understand; the drummers' deaths are a running gag.
- 2Republic
They owe the road and the crew almost nothing, and that vacancy is the joke.
- 3Temperance
Volume and vanity keep the next date coming, and nobody retires the habit.
- 6Truth
Eleven is a silly lie about loudness, and the film never believes the band.
- 2Stewardship
What remains is the bit: a band that learned nothing and was not asked to.
Where to watch
Finding the page.
Live Historic · This Is Spinal Tap · 33IMDb
