The reason, as with most things, is usually money. Movies don’t just make themselves, a vast majority requiring hundreds if not thousands of employees to produce, market, and distribute their wares, and that work isn’t cheap. Funding such an endeavor is essentially a wager, with studio executives betting that the finished product will put enough butts in seats to supply ample return on investment, which makes the very existence of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues completely baffling. A legacy sequel to a cult comedy that met audiences forty-one years ago, it’s safe to say that hardly anyone was clamoring to be reunited with the metal head buffoons from Rob Reiner’s 1984 original, as evidenced by an unthinkably atrocious opening weekend at the box office. So why? Why is this here, why now, and why not let a certified classic continue to rest on its own merits? It’s not cash this time, but rather currency’s ugly stepsister; contracts.

As is the case with everything in The End Continues, the action on screen operates as a funhouse mirror for the goings-on behind the scenes. Despite a middling theatrical run, the avid fan base that eventually rallied around This is Spinal Tap made for a cottage industry of DVD sales, syndicated airings, and plenty of merchandising, with just about all of the proceeds heading straight back to the film’s distributors. Reiner and co-stars Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer didn’t take kindly to the arrangement, collectively filing multiple lawsuits that were settled out of court, and eventually gaining legal custody of the movie and its characters at the dawn of 2021. Their eagerness to get the show back out on the road runs counter-current to where Nigel (Guest), David (McKean), and Derek (Shearer) find themselves at the opening of the new flick, reluctantly getting the band back together at the behest of some fine print, tucked away in their decades-old record deal. The question, on both sides of the lens, is whether these knuckleheads can still rock while pushing 80, and, more pointedly, whether anyone will show up to find out.

The trio has aged considerably since their mid-80’s heyday, but so has the chosen format. While films from across the world had previously trotted out the Mockumentary apparatus, Spinal Tap is largely credited with bringing it to the American masses, whose present day adoration of The Office and Abbott Elementary suggests an evergreen appeal to the structure that shows no signs of slowing. This recent boom coincided with a larger audience appetite for documentaries writ large, necessitating more output, increased budgets, and more thoughtful cosmetic construction. The End Continues wisely observes these changes, but the comely visuals and boots-on-the-ground faux journalism chafe against its forbearer’s low budget irreverence and roguish charm. Attempting to catch that same zany lightning in an identically sized bottle would have been a fool’s errand, but rushing to meet us in the present day is hardly better, stranding the movie without a promising point of entry.

That’s hardly a death knell for a flick that’s primarily designed as a joke delivery system, and while this new entry falls well short of its predecessor’s lofty laughing heights, targets are hit at a decent clip. The dirty secret of successful comedies is that volume is more important than ingenuity, and while you can hear a pin drop after many of The End’s attempted knee slappers, the dryly executed absurdity still tickles when considered in whole. Increasing the workload on Reiner’s director character works in fits and starts, but Guest is still a magician, even if some of his spry impishness has receded with age. This is, after all, just about the oldest quartet of actors that’s ever headlined a Hollywood release, leading to some woefully antiquated stabs at humor. The sell-by date on japes involving queer women and the Blue Man Group is probably somewhere around the turn of the century; they’re not in poor taste so much as obsolete.

There is, however, an emotional benefit to the passage of time, with The End’s wistful nostalgia at its best when Reiner allows things to breathe. Novelty is a rare commodity in a culture that’s hellbent on recycling itself, and despite generally remaining loyal to Spinal Tap’s devil-may-care bonafides, seeing Guest, McKean, and Shearer play and harmonize together splits the difference between a heart-swelling reunion and the unearthing of archival footage that was thought to be lost. The sentimentality is more effective while wafting around the margins, losing a bit of its power when pushed to the center near the closing stretch, but that doesn’t negate what’s come before. Strangely enough, the closest point of comparison here is Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary Get Back, which similarly walked a tightrope between boredom and revelation. They’re both entrancing for the sheer implausibility of their existence, even if the events themselves are frequently mundane.

Bolstering the connective tissue is a cameo from Paul McCartney, whose surprising allotment of screentime is later surpassed by none other than Sir Elton John. Those are some pretty big gets, affording credibility to the project where literally phoned-in performances from Questlove, Chad Smith, and Lars Ulrich fall short, but the involvement of so many industry icons is telling. The legacy of This is Spinal Tap is still ongoing, reaching across years and musical genres, a pop culture artifact that remains in mint condition. It went to eleven so that The End Continues could rally to hit a six, which is surely damning with faint praise, but you can’t begrudge the effort. There’s no use worrying about tarnishing the untarnishable; the boys wanted to give it one last whirl, and found enough fiscally irresponsible backers to get the ball rolling. It’s a lark, and only an intermittently successful one at that, but for the impassioned believers, there’s nothing wrong with a little more Spinal Tap.