“The End Continues.” That’s the comical subtitle of the sequel to “This Is Spinal Tap,” a movie more than 40 years in the making, which has finally hit theaters in 2025.
At the time of the original (1984), our favorite fictional heavy metal band was already several miles over the hill. The Spandex’d “band,” led by Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), had been around since the 1950s, when they got their start (as did the Beatles) as a skiffle group — the New Originals.
In the ‘60s the group went through phases doing Merseybeat (as the Thamesmen) and flower-power psychedelia, before settling on their forever name and their hard-rock image. By 1984, real rock groups that dated back to the early ’60s were considered wildly outdated. Even the Rolling Stones were facing questions about their relevancy as the core band members entered their (gasp) 40s.
Some of us have waited 40 years for a Spinal Tap reunion. Like most rock ’n’ roll reunions, it’ll surely leave something to be desired, but then leaving something to be desired was an integral part of the Spinal Tap lampoonery.
Rock music was always meant to be big, dopey fun, despite what all those ponderous Hall of Famer biopics would have you believe. There aren’t many truly good movies about rock ’n’ roll, and we’re certainly not going to argue that all the films on the list below are masterpieces.
To the contrary — these rock movies are just plain fun. The funnest? You decide.
A Hard Day’s Night (1964)
Before the Beatles discovered hallucinogenics, epaulets, and Scottish farmhouses, they let their hair down in the first of two slapstick comedies (the second being “Help!”) from the director Richard Lester. He also made “The Knack … and How to Get It” (1965), a similarly lightweight comedy that did not star the Beatles … but may have lent its name to the Beatlesque band that broke out in 1979.
Head (1968)
When the Monkees were trying to shed their image as the “Prefab Four,” they put their moptops together with filmmaker Bob Rafelson and a largely unknown screenwriter named Jack Nicholson (yes, that Jack Nicholson), who cooked up this cockamamie script. “Hey hey, we’re the Monkees,” the group chanted, “to that we all agree/ A manufactured image with no philosophies.”
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019)
The restored real-life footage from Dylan’s carnivalesque 1975 tour is exceptional. So is that hat. The retrospective “talking head” interviews, most of them made up out of whole cloth, are bananas. Dylan himself says he can’t remember anything about the tour, because “I wasn’t even born!”
Purple Rain (1984)
Named to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 2019, this film would be just another weird reminder of the excesses of the ’80s were it not for the supercharged magnetism of the fop in the ruffled shirt astride the purple motorcycle. Thank you, Your Royal Badness, for a funky good time.
Velvet Goldmine (1998)
Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays the fictional glam rocker Brian Slade in Todd Haynes’s film loosely based on the real-life escapades of Bowie, Iggy, and Lou. Haynes, who knows the territory well, went on to make the multiple-Dylans biopic “I’m Not There” (2007) and the excellent 2021 documentary “The Velvet Underground.”
Almost Famous (2000)
Cameron Crowe directs the fictionalized story of the very young Cameron Crowe (he was 16!) touring with America’s biggest rock bands, on assignment for Rolling Stone. The late Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the late rock critic Lester Bangs, and the cameos are abundant: Rainn Wilson, Marc Maron, Mitch Hedberg. Jimmy Fallon’s Dennis Hope: “If you think Mick Jagger will still be out there trying to be a rock star at age 50, then you are sadly, sadly mistaken.”
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Film version of the wildly successful off-Broadway stage musical of the same name. “We were outgrossing monster trucks in Wichita,” claims John Cameron Mitchell’s title character, a glam queen who loses her mojo to the impressionable boy who steals her songs. Bonus track: Natick’s Jonathan Richman once covered composer Stephen Trask’s key song, “Origin of Love.”
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
Chock full of cliches yanked from successful rock and pop biopics, including “Ray” and “Walk the Line.” Did John C. Reilly’s performance in this film help land him the role of the gentleman-farmer emcee at this year’s Newport Folk Festival? We suspect so.
Kneecap (2024)
The three hooligans in the Irish rap group Kneecap play fast and loose with their own origin story, borrowing every trick in the high-speed-caper playbook while making a forceful point about language and sovereignty in Northern Ireland: “Every word of Irish spoken is a bullet fired for Irish freedom.”
Anvil! The Story of Anvil (2008)
The incredible true story of an ’80s-vintage Canadian metal band whose cofounders are still trying to make a go of it, decades later. “We said we’re gonna do it till we’re old men, and we really meant that,” says guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow. (He’s the naked one in the movie poster whose Flying V is covering his private parts.) The parallels with “Spinal Tap” are uncanny, right down to the drummer’s name: Robb Reiner.
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.