This is SPINAL TAP! (with two dots over the N)

One of mockumentary This is Spinal Tap's finer aspects is its verisimilitude. On more than one occasion, someone has remarked to me, "Well, the movie's about Spinal Tap, the band, right? They are a real band." Clearly that person is wrong, but the film feels so real that the legions of people believing in its authenticity aren't surprising.

This "rockumentary" features Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner, also the director), a television commercial director, documenting the U.S. comeback tour for Spinal Tap, a once popular heavy-metal group. They are led by vocalist David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and Nigel Tufnul (Christopher Guest), who mostly hangs around to randomly blast out wicked guitar solos.

Spinal Tap roams through America to promote their new record, "Smell the Glove," whose cover features a man shoving a leather glove into a leashed woman's nose. K-Mart and Sears call the album misogynistic and refuses to sell it, which dissatisfies the band's label. Other issues arise -- their drummers have a way of mysteriously dying off, Hubbins' girlfriend/wife/groupie/whatthefuckever is trying to swindle the group from manager Ian Faith's (Tony Hendra) hands. As tour dates are cancelled and America's growing apathy to the group becomes lucid, tensions arise between the bandmembers.

This is Spinal Tap's integrity is augmented by its improvisational design: while most scenes were staged with a certain idea in mind, almost none of the dialogue was written previous to shooting. Spinal Tap looks, sounds, and acts like a real late-70s-early-80s hard-rock band, pushing out tracks titled "Sex Farm" or "Lick My Love Pump" and dotting their live show with various pelvic thrusts and ass-shakes.

Even more, it's hard not to feel a degree of sympathy or even empathy for the band while viewing; McKean, Reiner and Guest all play their parts believably enough for both musicians and nons to relate. In one interview, Robert Plant even commented that he connected with the film.

The best comedies improve with repeat viewings, and the same can be said for This is Spinal Tap. Its existence as both a tribute and spoof to heavy metal is highly honorable.

Rating: A- (90/100)