Intro for March 13, 2025

Dear Gossips,

This sequel goes to eleven!!! This Is Spinal Tap is one of my favorite films of all time, a comedy from 1984 that is as funny today as it was forty-one years ago. Like Airplane!, it’s a film that makes me laugh every time I watch it, even though I know every line by heart. 

Yesterday’s announcement of a sequel, titled Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, filled me with both joy and dread.

 

Joy, because I love Spinal Tap and am happy to revisit that world. Dread, because comedy sequels rarely work. And by “rarely” I mean “almost never”. Usually, the best you get is “not completely embarrassing”, though there are a few notable exceptions, like Addams Family Values, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and 22 Jump Street, all of which are BETTER than their first movies. And I will fight for Wayne’s World 2, which I think is funnier and weirder than Wayne’s World, already a funny and weird movie. 

In the “pro” column for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is that the original cast of Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean are back, along with Fran Drescher as Bobbi Flekman, and Rob Reiner appearing within the film as filmmaker Marty Di Bergi. Reiner is also directing, and the film is once again written by Guest, McKean, Shearer, and Reiner. So that’s the original brain trust reunited. (A notable omission is producer Karen Murphy, who frequently produces Christopher Guest’s movies. Not this time, though.) Also, stylizing the “II” in the key art after Stonehenge is chef’s kiss-perfection. 

In the “con” column for The End Continues is a September release date. The film is set for September 12, 2025, which is during TIFF. I have said before that September release dates do not fill me with confidence, and that remains true. Sure, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice made money last September (over $451 million worldwide), but if you’re really, truly, confident in your film, why are you releasing it during the one time of the year most of the world entertainment press is busy with film festivals? It’s not a confidence builder!

But I want to believe that a Spinal Tap sequel will be good, because I love Spinal Tap so much, and the idea of a worthy companion is a tantalizing prospect. We need joy, we need laughter, and few things make me laugh as much as oblivious English rockers failing to find their stage. We also haven’t had a Christopher Guest movie since 2016’s underappreciated Mascots, so we’re overdue on that front, too. But until I see otherwise, I will believe that a Spinal Tap sequel will be good, that we’re in for an Addams Family Values-style treat. Whatever the Spinal Tap version of Wednesday Addams burning down a summer camp is, I can’t wait to see it.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah