This Is Spın̈al Tap (1984)
It is extraordinarily rare for a director to change the entire direction of comedy with their first feature, but that’s exactly what Rob Reiner did with this legendary mockumentary. Following a disastrous American tour by a witless British rock group, This Is Spın̈al Tap manages to nail so many music industry cliches so perfectly that the film quickly became a mainstay of tour buses around the world. Reiner himself got in on the act, playing the blowhard documentary director Marty Di Bergi. The fact that something entirely improvised could create so many deathless lines is even more astounding. This year a sequel, The End Continues, was released. What fitting bookends to a brilliant career.
