‘Spinal Tap’ Has Lost None of Its Satiric Edge

Hard as it is for a film to be funny, devastatingly clever and original the first time out, it’s even harder to retain those qualities 16 years after the fact. But “This Is Spinal Tap,” which pioneered the concept of mockumentary, is that rare comedy that is as completely entertaining now in its re-release (playing exclusively at the Nuart in West Los Angeles) as it was back then.

Since “Tap” came out, the fake fly-on-the-wall form has become such a recognizable commodity that even inferior movies like “Drop Dead Gorgeous” have tried to capitalize on it. “Tap” co-star and co-writer Christopher Guest made one of the best moc-docs, “Waiting For Guffman,” and has another, “Best in Show,” slated for a highly anticipated debut at the Toronto film festival.

But “Tap’s” intimate look at “one of Britain’s loudest bands” remains an acknowledged classic, as funny a film about the intersection of music and popular culture as has ever been made. Not only hasn’t it lost a step, it in some ways seems sharper and more prescient than ever before.

For one thing, when “Tap” came out in 1984, it was so unblinkingly tongue in cheek, audiences, especially in previews, often thought it was a real documentary on a real band. Today, enough people are in on the joke that this re-release is accompanied by an ultra-thorough “The Official Spinal Tap Companion,” which features the largely improvised script, and a DVD version that includes a considerable number of outtakes.

More than that, an apparently endless stream of “Tap” merchandise is in the works, including, the Hollywood Reporter details, “posters, lunch boxes, stickers, trading cards, lighters, shot glasses, limited-edition art, T-shirts and embroidered baseball caps and visors.” The piece de resistance is 12-inch dolls of band stalwarts Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls, complete with “a collector guitar pick signed by the band member.”

If ever a group of guys deserved this acclaim, it’s actors Guest (Tufnel), Michael McKean (St. Hubbins) and Harry Shearer (Smalls), who co-wrote the film along with director Rob Reiner, who also played the mockumentary’s unflappable director Marti DiBergi. “I wanted to capture the sights, the sounds, the smells of a hard-working rock band on the road,” DiBergi intones as the film opens. “And I got that. But I got more, a lot more.”

‘This Is Spinal Tap” is still hilarious because it remains what it always was, no more than a silly millimeter off of reality. The soaring improvisation of the actors is effective because the film’s basic scenarios are as carefully thought out as the band’s elaborately faked 17-year, 15-album history.

The same holds true for the group’s songs, titles like “Sex Farm Woman,” “Heavy Duty” and “Big Bottom,” convincingly played by actors who not only are musically adept but know how to make the most perfect mock-orgiastic rock ‘n’ roll faces.

“Tap’s” plot follows the veteran heavy metal band as it lurches from fiasco to fiasco on a U.S. tour for which the word “ill-advised” is altogether too mild, a tour so grim that a stop at Elvis’ grave at Graceland is needed to cheer the guys up.

As funny as the well-remembered set pieces--the band getting lost on the way to the stage, Nigel showing off an amp that goes up to 11, Derek getting trapped in an on-stage pod--are the cameos by people whose profiles have grown in the intervening years. There’s Billy Crystal as a mime, Fran Drescher as the indefatigable PR woman Bobbi Flekman, Anjelica Huston as the designer of the celebrated 18-inch Stonehenge, and more.

Best of all is the priceless language the band employs, the perfect and perfectly inane deadpan ripostes they come up with. As David St. Hubbins memorably observed, “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.” This is one film that has always known just where that is.

* Exclusively at the Nuart Theater, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., (310) 478-6379.