It’s hard to overstate the “cultural significance” of Rob Reiner’s spoof “rockumentary” “This Is Spinal Tap”, said Wendy Ide in The Observer . An account of a disastrous US tour by a clueless English rock band, the 1984 film has become “an endlessly quoted cult classic”, regularly cited as one of the funniest comedies ever made. Now, 40-plus years on, Reiner and his cast have reunited for a sequel and, alas, it is unlikely to inspire any such devotion. As in the first film, it purports to be a fly-on-the-wall documentary, but this time, the laughs are sadly “thin on the ground”.

High expectations

No sequel to “Spinal Tap” could meet fans’ highest expectations, said James Walton in The Spectator . This one doesn’t “live up to the lower ones, either”. When the film opens, the band

See Full Page