BRIAN VINER reviews Spinal Tap II: The End Continues: Even with names like McCartney and Elton… Spinal Tap hit a few bum notes in spoof sequel

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (15, 83 mins)

Rating:

Verdict: Falls a bit flat 

Not many films are revered quite like This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner’s 1984 spoof which is often credited with pioneering the ‘mockumentary’ genre and was hailed at the time for taking the long-overdue mickey out of self-mythologising rock musicians.

So when the news broke that a sequel was on the cards after so many decades, delight was tempered with apprehension. Even with Reiner directing the same brilliant writer-performers, returning in the same roles, could a sequel possibly be as uproariously funny, as bang on the money, as the original?

We now have the answer – and regrettably it’s no. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues has its moments, and the principals, long-haired and jowly, all look exactly like clapped-out heavy-metal stars.

Moreover, the film is graced by the commendably game Paul McCartney and Elton John, along with some lesser real-life rockers.

Unfortunately, I could have counted the number of explosive laughs on a set of guitar strings, maybe even on a plectrum. The difference is that it strains and gurns to be funny. In 1984 the effort didn’t show.

As David St Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) noted back then, there’s a fine line between clever and stupid. Too often, this film steps across that line as it documents the band’s reunion concert after a seemingly irreparable break-up. That, at least, has a ring of truth to it.

Fifteen years after the rift, and with Reiner back as the guileless interviewer Marty DiBergi, Nigel is tracked down to a cheese-and-guitar shop in Berwick- upon-Tweed, living with a woman whose heart he stole with a piece of Wigmore.

David is in California, composing music for when people are put on hold over the phone: he’s the proud winner of a ‘Holdie’.

Former bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) lives in London where he runs a glue museum.

Their former manager, Ian Faith, has passed away but his daughter Hope (Kerry Godliman) is brokering the reunion concert, with the help of promoter Simon Howler, played by Chris Addison with a kind of self-aware po-facedness that grates more than it amuses.

The best parodies turn the ‘reality’ dial just a few degrees; this film, to paraphrase the original, turns it up to 11. 

So Howler tells the band he would like a couple of them to die during the reunion, to maximise publicity. Is that clever or stupid? I’ll let you decide.

On the upside, there are plenty of snappy one-liners to enjoy. A venue is found in New Orleans following the cancellation of An Evening With Stormy Daniels. 

And as rehearsals get underway, in a house that’s said to be haunted by Fats Domino and Louis Armstrong, Sir Paul and Sir Elton make the most of their cameos.

The former smiles affably even as David lambasts his ‘toxic personality’ and accuses him of ‘throwing his weight around’, while Elton John comes off worse still in the Stonehenge set, another wink and a nod to the original film.

Those winks and nods notwithstanding, This Is Spinal Tap was always likely to be a hard act to follow. In a way it’s to the credit of Reiner and the others that it has proved beyond them.

The Long Walk (15, 108 mins) 

Rating:

Verdict: Blisteringly nasty

Rob Reiner also directed Stand By Me (1986) and Misery (1990), two of the finest of the many screen adaptations of Stephen King’s novels and short stories. Unbelievably, there are around 80 of them altogether, and The Long Walk is yet another.

Indeed, it was the first book King wrote (published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman); so long ago that he intended it as a Vietnam War allegory.

It still feels allegorical, as, in a dystopian near-future, a group of young men embark on an epic walking contest through a totalitarian America, which only one of them will survive.

The others will all be shot for stopping, or merely for falling below the minimum walking speed of three miles per hour. It is a brutally nasty horror-thriller, directed by Francis Lawrence, whose four Hunger Games films were a good deal more nuanced and satisfying.

Still, this has really impressive performances from Cooper Hoffman (son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman and star of Licorice Pizza) and the excellent young British actor David Jonsson (Rye Lane) as two of the walkers, Ray and Peter – and from a barely recognisable Mark Hamill as the ruthless army officer presiding over the ghastly endurance test.

All films are in cinemas now.

Nothing’s changed at Downton… and hurrah for that 

The wrought-iron gates have finally clanged shut on Downton Abbey.

This third film is dedicated to Dame Maggie Smith. Her character, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, died at the end of the last picture and now, sadly, she has followed suit. 

Others are leaving Downton, too, although happily not head-first. Beetle-browed butler Mr Carson (Jim Carter) is retiring, as is head cook Mrs Patmore (Lesley Nicol).

Nothing more seismic could happen to the great house, short of it burning to the ground and maybe not even that, than Mr Carson leaving.

He knows it too, which is why he keeps turning up like a pensioned-off football manager, certain that nobody can get a performance out of his old players like he can.

Reassuringly, other things haven’t changed at all. As Lady Grantham, Elizabeth McGovern (whose husband Simon Curtis is the film’s director) still simpers her lines instead of speaking them. So what of the plot? Actually, there isn’t one. Downton films are basically entire seasons compressed into two hours, with multiple storylines that never coalesce.

The dominant ones here concern the scandalous divorce of Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) and a financial squeeze on her father Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) that might force him to sell his London mansion and move into, whisper it, a flat.

It’s corny, formulaic, sometimes preposterous, but immersing in Downton is like luxuriating in a warm bath. And hurrah for that.

A longer review of Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale ran last week.

ALSO SHOWING…

Sam Riley plays a jaded long-serving tennis coach in Islands (15, 123 mins, ***), a slow-moving but effective psycho-drama set at a resort hotel on Fuerteventura.

Tom puts just about enough effort into his daily tennis lessons to keep hold of his job, but it’s an unrewarding existence which he tries to enliven with drugs, alcohol and one-night stands.

His dissolute lifestyle is soon shaken up with the arrival of a bickering English couple, Anne (Stacy Martin) and Dave (Jack Farthing), and their seven-year-old son. Dave is obnoxious, Anne is flirtatious, and Tom finds himself sucked into their family dynamics, especially once a missing-persons investigation gets underway.

German director Jan-Ole Gerster toys with our narrative expectations, playfully back-handing red herrings our way, one in the form of a mischievous camel. What is the story principally about? Crime? Marriage? Tennis? Sex? Intriguingly, he keeps us guessing.

The best opportunity for us all to get our oats this week comes from The Golden Spurtle (PG, 75 mins, ****), Constantine Costi’s deliciously quirky documentary about the world porridge-making championships in a village in the Scottish Highlands.

One of those films that celebrate eccentricity and make you downright proud to be British, it’s a delight from start to finish.

I can’t say the same for The Man In My Basement (15, 115 mins, **), a not-very-thrilling psychological thriller.

Why does a wealthy white man (Willem Dafoe) want to pay extravagantly to rent a basement belonging to a feckless African-American (Corey Hawkins)?

Alas, I stopped caring long before the end. The acting is fine but the plot is convoluted and the dialogue over-written.