Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? That has always seemed to me more than a rhetorical question. Yes please is usually the best answer. Time is not a friend.
The great rock mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap has enjoyed an astonishing afterlife since its first release in 1984. Although well reviewed, it was only a modest box-office success, perhaps because the first audiences genuinely didn’t know what to make of it. With its release on VHS and DVD, however, it has become a cult classic: endlessly cited and frequently featuring in lists of the greatest films of all time.
Even then, Spinal Tap seemed to be on their last legs, already pushing 40. After 17 years and 15 albums, they’d earned a place in rock history as one of England’s loudest bands, but this 1982 tour of America did not go well: venue after venue cancelled, the new album, Smell the Glove, bombed. Miraculously, though, their song “Sex Farm” became a big hit in Japan…
And now, here’s Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, more of the same, astonishingly, 41 years later. Christopher Guest (77) is still lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel; Michael McKean (77) returns as David St Hubbins; and Harry Shearer (81) once again stars as bassist Derek Smalls. Rob Reiner (78) reappears as director Marty DiBergi –and directs. Gamely, Paul McCartney (83) and Elton John (78) turn up as themselves, a fitting tribute to Spinal Tap’s place in the rock firmament.
Tap are contractually obliged to play one final concert, and Marty helps track the guys down. Nigel has been running a cheese-and-guitar shop in Berwick-upon-Tweed; David is in California composing hold-the-line music, Derek is curating London’s New Museum of Glue. The trio meet up in New Orleans and start looking for a new drummer. Their unsympathetic promoter (Chris Addison, brilliant) – whose merch ideas include “Tap Water” – sees it as most profitable to turn the gig into a memorial concert, ideally with one of them dying on stage, but the band have other ideas.
Proust had a go at describing a reunion like this – a party where people seemed to have got on a bit – but he didn’t give it half as much welly as Spinal Tap. It’s a triumph. You can just tell these guys go way back. What’s new here is that, if the previous target was the sheer crassness of heavy metal, this time it’s the strange phenomenon of rockstars persisting into old age. The music may be an expression of the sexuality and aggression of youth, but there we are: Ozzy has fallen, yet Mick Jagger and others of his vintage are still strutting their stuff. Among them – however stiff, white-haired and fallen in the chops – are Tap. Even being photographed in a cemetery in New Orleans only gives Derek an idea for a new song: “Rockin’ in the Urn” (“Wait till you see me when I’m all ashes”).
Rock ’n’ roll will never die? It’s still a baby compared to the English class system. Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is the third Downton film, following six TV series and five Christmas specials – 15 years of hard grovel in all. It’s the Thirties. The dowager countess is dead (Maggie Smith made it all worthwhile), but the family marches on. The big problem this time is that Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) has been divorced, leading to social ostracism. To the rescue comes not royalty or a film production, but Noël Coward (Arty Froushan, unconvincing), staying at Downton and proving such a draw that even the gratin can’t resist an invitation.
Meanwhile, Lady Grantham’s brother Harold (Paul Giamatti) arrives from America to admit he’s lost nearly all her money. Changes must be made! And they are, for great families and great houses know how to adapt.
As ever, the aristocrats and the servants get on splendidly. “I’ve enjoyed a good life in your service, m’lord,” Mr Carson (Jim Carter) tells Lord Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), who has visited him in his cottage to seek his advice. You might as well be watching Ted and Ralph in The Fast Show.
There’s no replacing Maggie Smith, but Simon Russell Beale is hilarious as Hector Moreland, a whiskery grump whose attempts to monopolise the county show are thwarted by the grandees and the servants working together.
At the Leicester Square premiere of The Grand Finale last week, the ecstatic audience had come dressed as smartly as if they had actually been invited to Downton Abbey itself. Can this really be the end? With a twinkle, writer and producer Julian Fellowes says: “We should never say never.” Never! Never never!
“Spinal Tap II: The End Continues” and “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” are in cinemas now
[See also: On Swift Horses is a plodding take on queer desire]
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