Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9786305922759
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Widescreen, NTSC
ISBN: 6305922756
Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Languages: EnglishOriginal LanguageDolby Digital 5.1SpanishSubtitledFrenchSubtitled
Manufacturer: MGM (Video & DVD)
MPN: MGMD1000973D
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Publisher: MGM (Video & DVD)
Region Code: 1
Release Date: September 12, 2000
Running Time: 82 minutes
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Theatrical Release Date: March 02, 1984

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
In 1982 legendary british heavy metal band spinal tap attempt an american comeback tour accompanied by a fan who is also a film-maker. The resulting documentary interspersed with powerful performances of taps pivotal music and profound lyrics candidly follows a rock group heading towards crisis. Studio: Tcfhe/mgm Release Date: 05/22/2007 Starring: Rob Reiner Christopher Guest Run time: 88 minutes Rating: R

Amazon.com:
Director Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) solemnly alerts us to the glory that was Spinal Tap in his introduction to this "rockumentary" about the legendary British heavy-metal group, featuring lead guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), lead singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), and a succession of drummers whose careers were cut short by spontaneously combusting on their stool, drowning in somebody else's vomit, or otherwise perishing in untimely fashion. Under DiBergi's studious interrogation, the band and their familiars retrace the band's evolution from head-bopping Mersey Beat poseurs to head-banging metal poseurs, each change in musical direction or tonsorial chic having little effect on the surviving trio's sublime idiocy. For, as St. Hubbins (he's the "deep" one, relatively speaking) sagely observes, "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever."

Happily for us, director Reiner, who developed the underlying story line with Guest and former Credibility Gap pranksters McKean and Shearer, stays squarely on the right side of the line, even as his writer-actors remain hilariously trapped on the other side. In lieu of a formal shooting script, the quartet created an extensive and detailed band history ripe with the sort of dead-pan detail that hard-core rock historians and screwball aficionados will savor on countless replays; with the three Tap members also musicians themselves, the "band" developed its stage act under the unsuspecting noses of L.A. club denizens, who accepted them as just as loud, flashy, sexist, and obvious as any other mullet-tressed, leather-garbed brigade of guitar slingers, circa 1984. The resulting footage thus manages to lob its punch lines and build its characters (including some thinly veiled character assassinations of various industry folks) with a loose, tossed-away verve rooted in the improvisational approach. This Is Spinal Tap remains the funniest, and most truthful, look at rock culture ever filmed and a personal best for all involved. --Sam Sutherland




Rating: - This is Spinal Tap
If you like dry, hilarious humor, this is it! Absolutely full of surprises and a wonderful movie. (Just remember that it's make-believe...)

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Rating: - Musicians, Music, Fans, Insanity, Fun, Drama = Spinal Tap!!
A must see for anyone who was ever in a "ROCK" band and or who has been associated with bands for more than a couple of years!!!

This is "Behind The Music" before VH1 and MTV!!! Every facet of every scene was true of someone you may have known, which makes it even more hilarious as all the character's, confrontations, trial's and tribulation's all come together at once... here and now so to speak.

This movie is a highlight reel!!! Too real... too funny ...too close to ... Read More

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Rating: - Commentary??
Does anyone know if this release contains the out-of-character commentary from the critereon?

(the version that came out before the special edition (which featured the hilarious in-character commentary)??

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Rating: - Jolly Good!
I remember catching this film on MTV many years ago; I caught it about midway through, watched the rest of it (while laughing me bum off), then made a mental note to myself ("I've got to get this movie!"). Well, some twentysomething years later, I now have the Special Edition of THIS IS SPINAL TAP. Better late than never, as they say; was it ever worth the wait.

Tongue-in-cheek parody is comic gold when done well; and this spoof of the heavy metal hair bands of the Eighties simultaneously ... Read More

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Rating: - CRITERION version: accept no substitute!
I'd give Tap eleven stars if I could. I'd rate my purchase from Amazon Marketplace (from chinaski77) that high as well. Be sure to know exactly what the seller of this rarer version is ready to give you for your money. Fortunately, I got the best deal I could have imagined. My copy looks like it's missing only the original shrinkwrap. The price I paid is not much more than the original price that Criterion lists. As superior as this version is to the "Special Edition," it's not worth being snookered into ... Read More

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