Artist This Is Spinal Tap

There were “mockumentaries” before This Is Spinal Tap, but director Rob Reiner and writer-stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer were the ones who made the genre viable, both as a source for wild comedy and as a medium for little moments of clarity. As much a parody of real rock-docs like The Kids Are Alright and The Last Waltz as a skewering of the heavy-metal clichés of the ’70s and ’80s, This Is Spinal Tap still thrives as a cult favorite because of its rich store of quotable lines and the fact that, through all the classic setpieces (Graceland, Stonehenge, Puppet Show, and so on), the film has a real, bittersweet, oddly moving story.

Updated 09/05/2009