This Is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues - review
This Is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues - review
A review by
ScreamingSteelUS September 25, 2025
This Is Spinal Tap is the greatest of all heavy metal movies. Its vision of metal is not the most extreme, perhaps not the most deeply rooted in the craft, but it is the film that first understood heavy metal, both its basic appeal and its inherent absurdity, back when the genre was advancing to its commercial peak; its faithfulness to the experience of rock stardom has been rued and hailed by generations of musicians who suffered at the hands of byzantine backstages, minuscule malapropisms, and uppity puppet shows. The film's soundtrack, composed and performed by the actors themselves, contains authentically engaging hard rock/glam metal anthems that are too good to be dismissed as merely parody; "Stonehenge", "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight", "Hell Hole", "Big Bottom", and other faux-classics are as catchy and fun as they are satirical. Uniting what would become a consistently successful ensemble of actors, This Is Spinal Tap also succeeded as a comedy where subsequent, more worshipful, films have failed: too many movies dive fully into the metal ethos without the bones to make a great movie, or else skim the surface of vaguely remembered news media summaries for a hollow reenactment of metal stereotypes. This Is Spinal Tap came at the right time to hit metal in one of its silliest eras, and it was consistently funny without too much expense of its metal cred or the pretense of the documentary format. From the Stonehenge mishap to the ever-vacant drum throne to the amps that go to 11, This Is Spinal Tap gave heavy metal many of its most beloved inside jokes and running gags, and its influence as both a comedy film and a record of metal culture persists to this day.
Not so much, however, that anyone would have considered a sequel necessary, especially not after 41 years. Even with a few successive recordings and tours over the years keeping the Tap intermittently alive in the outside world (including some high-profile gigs that The End Continues reminds us of at its outset), there never seemed to be much call for a formal revisitation. For a satire as hip and incisive as This Is Spinal Tap to indulge the commercial urge for unplanned continuation feels like another chain breaking from the mail of creative originality; it’s a reminder that in another 20 years there won’t be a book or film or game in the entire world that doesn’t have a spinoff, sequel, tie-in, or reboot. Still, the Tap aren’t sowing on barren earth: just as This Is Spinal Tap caught heavy metal during its breakaway from the underground to disintegrate into the mainstream, The End Continues picks up at a time when many of Spinal Tap’s contemporaries have embarked on a similar routine of breakup, fadeout, and risky resurrection, so there are certainly more jokes to be mined from this belated, begrudging reunion concept. With a few strong exceptions, the apathetic reformation of ancient traditional metal bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s is one of the more unflattering trends in metal today, and who better than Spinal Tap, living that same experience, to point out how silly that is?
So one would think, anyway, but The End Continues isn’t really after anything in particular; where the original film keenly made a mess of rock’n’roll in its address or invention of industry foibles, the sequel doesn’t have as lofty a goal as commenting on the world around it. It feels very much like one of those pleasantly lukewarm reunion albums: Spinal Tap has already broken all the ground it means to, and this is just an encore to give us some more quality time with the band while they’re still fit enough to faff about. And just like (insert your favorite geriatric NWOBHM middleweight), this is a reunion that is often enjoyable but never essential. By the closing credits, though I was relieved to find no great embarrassment to the legacy, I was no more convinced of the project’s vitality than I was when the news first pricked my ears.
The film opens in the present, 41 years after the original “documentary” aired. Spinal Tap had experienced a brief resurgence during the embattled North American tour depicted in the first film, embarking on a successful Japanese tour and squeezing a few more pennies out of the act. Before long, however, tensions resurfaced between the members, the gigs dried up, and the legendary Spinal Tap dissolved for good. Until, of course, some years later: the death of ex-manager Ian Faith triggers an examination of his contract with the band, and his daughter Hope (Kerry Godliman), now in possession of the contract, discovers a clause requiring Spinal Tap to perform one final show. So begins the hunt for the estranged members and the preparation for a finally-for-real-probably-final spectacle. It falls to documentarian Marty DiBergi (played as before by the film’s actual director, Rob Reiner) to track down the core members – lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), lead vocalist and guitarist David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), and lead bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) – and follow them as they repair their relationships and get back in shape.
Like This Is Spinal Tap, The End Continues proceeds as a documentary, recorded with a wobbly handheld setup and largely improvised to capture the realistic essence of nonsense; its story is loosely guided and consists mostly of amusing vignettes circling around the shadow of a plot. The format plays to the strengths of the concept and the performers, as what gives Spinal Tap such authenticity is their perpetual state of disarmament; it's the petty chaos arising from awkward miscommunications that often leads to the funniest moments, and the improvisational setting fosters the characters' pettiest qualities in the most amusing ways. Leaving so much of the substance to unplanned digression is a double-edged sword, however: working so much outside a scheduled plot structure threatens the cohesion of the story, which now comes together more in the editing room than in the writers' room, and the success of the film as a whole rides more heavily on the success of each segment individually, which can be risky in the absence of a strong plot for viewers to make an anchoring investment in. That approach sometimes allows gaps. For example, I'm not sure it's ever actually stated that Spinal Tap are contractually obligated to perform one last gig, and that's what has prompted this whole affair. There is definitely talk of a contract being passed down, and that contract establishing some kind of leveraging power, but I think that what I know of the premise I learned from promotional materials. Given that this is a 41-year-late sequel reuniting characters who supposedly hate each other's guts, it feels strange not to lead with a particularly strong justification for putting them all in the same room again; either I missed some crucial expositional datum or the movie did.
I think the first film more capably influenced its scenes into a coherent order without leaving fingerprints; it had a stronger narrative direction and more credibly defined conflicts without obviously following a script. The drama between David and Nigel, which brought the first film to its boiling point and supposedly serves as the primary obstacle of this story, doesn't feel grounded in anything other than narrative necessity. The mutual tension leads to some humorous spats, and I don't necessarily need a deep understanding of its nature (most audiences will understand egotistical rock stars well enough without context), but it feels like that central problem dissipates without really being addressed. We're shown scenes of the members deciding to overcome their differences, but without an articulate explanation of why; where the first film gave us some breadcrumbs to construct a rationale behind the evolving relationships, again I think some important details in plot development here got lost in the wash.
What makes it feel less impactful still is that this intra-band conflict, while framed as the most significant source of dramatic material, is not in reality the focus of the film anyway: that would be the glorious spectacle of the reunion, the big draw for real-life audiences seeing The End Continues in theaters as much as it is for fictional fans packing stadiums to see Spinal Tap in-universe. The story here is that the Tap is back, and most elements flow in service of the big gig. This extends even as far as the documentary format itself, which eases back in places to apply a subtle polish in a further turn aside from the original. This Is Spinal Tap was brimming with verisimilitude: its dingy picture and primitive handheld aesthetics walked hand-in-hand with the disastrous self-direction of heavy metal, creating a feeling that each new source of humor or conflict was a sudden interruption of a genuine documentary. It felt right at home with that generation of gritty concert footage and home videos. The End Continues arrives in an era where the border between amateur and professional has shrunk to the point of occasional nonexistence thanks to advances in technology and accessibility, and it has updated its approach to better fit a 21st-century documentary style: this is a high-definition, multi-camera setup, sleeker and more practiced, more varied in presentation. A static camera feed shows us the fateful venue exterior during daytime setup; quick interspersions of live footage clue us into what the band (and friends) have been up to; clips from the first film remind us of key figures and scenes; David is interrupted mid-thought by a flashback; in a cutaway gag, Derek even shows off his own commercial for an ill-fated cryptocurrency venture. The variety feels faithful to what would be expected of a music documentary in this day and age, so in that sense the impression is as authentic as that of the first film, but in another way, it feels more artificial. With so much orchestrated activity, the viewer is more conscious of the film being edited. Some scenes don't seem possible in a strict documentary environment: David's flashback, for one, and in scenes of Nigel on a video call with his girlfriend, the camera has to approach his phone so closely and encroach so intimately on their conversation that it doesn't seem plausibly tolerated. As the documentary conceit blurs, a specific directorial vision comes into focus, and that creates a tonal confusion that sometimes works to the detriment of those deadpan improvisational scenes that are the bread and butter of this film.
At its lowest moments, The End Continues feels like little more than an homage to the original. The least successful jokes are those that simply recapitulate the old ones. Or, alternatively, those that try to wrangle some quasi-genuine laurels for the band. One of my least favorite scenes was a sequence of drummer auditions conducted via video call, where no less eminent personages than Questlove, Chad Smith of Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Lars Ulrich himself warily turn down the offer. The actors do their best to coax some laughs out of it and you can tell where the jokes are meant to surface, but the musicians aren't up to selling the material. The scene doesn't fly as designed. Besides, Dave Lombardo is free. Go ask him.
Fortunately, not every cameo suffers so. Sir Paul McCartney drops into the studio to witness an informal Spinal Tap rehearsal, gradually insinuating himself into offering David songwriting pointers before sitting down to jam on "Cups and Cakes" with the band. The scene is a tad overdrawn, with a few too many shots of Paul simply staring through the glass at the band, but he's a lot more comfortable in front of a camera than the aforementioned stars, and his presence allows for some quality material. One of my favorite jokes in the whole movie is when Spinal Tap see him coming around to enter the studio and David asks in a panic, "Wait, do we stand? Should we salute?" Another surprising highlight comes in the form of Sir Elton John. I never watched the video of "Stonehenge" with his vocal and piano contributions that was released prior to the film; it was such an inexplicable combination from a musical standpoint that I assumed it had to be some grab for any vaguely rock-relevant celebrity, and I didn't want to tank my hopes for the film so early. Whatever the impetus for the collaboration, it turned out to work exceedingly well. Elton has a strong and direct singing style that somehow suits "Stonehenge" just right, rather similar to Michael McKean's original execution as David but with more power; with the combination of some new instrumental arrangements, the modern "Stonehenge" was one of my favorite parts of the film.
Adding more substantially to the film are some new cast members, most successfully Kerry Godliman as Hope and Chris Addison as the snakelike, music-averse promoter Simon Howler. Their interactions with each other and with the band provide some much-needed connective tissue and fecund farmland for foolery. Addison especially functions so well in this environment that I kept wishing for more scenes with him. And fortunately there is quite a bit more to the punchline palette than trotting out the oldies. There is pure delight in seeing Marty tread awestruck through David's gorgeously appointed home studio, impressively packed with equipment, only for David to wave it all off as worthless because now he can do everything with a cheap laptop. To cap off the disappointment, David sits Marty down to show off what he's been up to post-Tap and gleefully rolls out, of all things, some rudimentary background music for a dull and piddling true-crime podcast. One of the most unexpected inclusions is Nigel's new Hatsune Miku pedal. You'll see it for only an instant if you're sharp, as it's buried amidst whole banks of other pedals, but you'll hear it, alright. And in spite of what I said above, trotting out the oldies is actually another good source of humor: Spinal Tap are aging as gracelessly as the rest of us, albeit with far more money and cheese than anyone else, and that requires some degree of undignified remediation. It’s late in the film when Simon realizes, much to everyone’s surprise, that in all their rehearsals together, Spinal Tap haven’t once performed while standing up. For my money, the star is still Christopher Guest, who is absorbing whenever he's onscreen: of all the cast, he's the quickest and the most unexpected, and his improvisations always lead to the most interesting places. Nigel Tufnel is oblivious but standoffish, stubborn in a childlike way about things that make sense only to him, so he's a perfect character for a movie like this and Guest plays him as truthfully as before.
The End Continues rarely, if ever, reaches the level of This Is Spinal Tap, as anyone could have safely assumed. There are fewer memorable bits and killer lines, more dead space in the banter, little in the way of new music, and overall not much to leave an impression of necessity as an experience. I wonder whether a second film couldn't have been more successfully constructed from the hundred-ish hours of footage shot for the original film, if one were considered mandatory. Yet my worst fears were never realized: there never came a point where I felt exhausted by the conceit or embarrassed by some tone-deaf misstep. If quieter and slower than the legend deserves, The End Continues does not tarnish the legacy of Spinal Tap; there are funny vignettes and good laughs, and the film makes for an easygoing reunion with some old nitwits. I went to see it with my parents, who loved it. A few years before This Is Spinal Tap was released, my dad was in a punk band called Spinal Tap, so named after my uncle's decision to explain the intimate details of the medical procedure over dinner one evening, and accordingly the movie became a favorite of our family, with a slightly more personal affection owing to its unwitting relevance to family history. Thus theatrical viewing was incumbent upon us, and I think taking my parents to see it was the best way to experience it; if you have the opportunity, I advise you to do the same. At this point it is likely too late to see the film in theaters - I barely caught it myself at the last minute. I suspect its lackluster box office performance owes to there being a fairly specific audience for this, which was likely caught unawares by the announcement of the project. But should you come across it on the streaming platform of your choice, there are definitely worse ways to spend an afternoon (and make sure you watch all the way through - a lot of the best lines await in the closing credits).
Written on 25.09.2025 by
Written on 25.09.2025 by
Dull Music for Dull People Comments
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To be honest I never thought that the first movie was great anyway. Very overrated in my opinion. So the expectations for a sequel so many years later are very very low.
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I would like to thank Spinal Tap for three of the best new artist additions on Metal-Archives. I wasn't even aware that there was a new movie associated with the new album. I knew they put out a couple more records after the original and figured it would be more of that same thing. I hope there's gonna be a screening around me.
---- Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking One day there will be no heart at all?
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