Spinal Tap II: The End Continues (2025)

I, alongside many others, was shocked to hear about the murder of Rob and Michele Reiner at the end of 2025. As a comedy fan, Rob Reiner is a bit of a legend. As a movie fan, his run of directorial credits from the mid-1980s through to the early 1990s is considered an almost-unrivalled hot streak. The fact that his film career both started and ended with Spinal Tap is at least a teeny tiny silver lining to the massive cloud that is his untimely death.

I have not really been aware of the overwhelming critical consensus on Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, but I really liked it. REALLY liked it. Like many sequels, it suffers from the fact that it just isn't the original film. But this had moments that made me laugh just as hard as I laughed at some moments in the first film.

Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) are aiming to re-unite Spinal Tap after a break of many years. There has been bitterness, there have been legal wranglings, and there have been a number of unexpected side ventures. The band are ready to rock though, but are there enough fans left eager to hear them?

Written by the leads and Reiner, and once again full of riffs and tangents that showcase the improvisational skills of the cast around the loose structure, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues is pretty much exactly what Tap fans should want from a sequel. The reveals of what each character has been up to prove delightful, the reworking of classic gags is done well, and the newer additions (Kerry Godliman, Chris Addison, and Valerie Franco) fit in perfectly with the established team. I would also say that all of the celebrity cameos work in service of the comedy, as opposed to bringing things grinding to a halt to simply point and highlight the household name, but I know some others disagree on that point.

It seems redundant to praise Guest, McKean, and Shearer on their ability to portray such fully-realised comedy creations, considering they have been among the very best to do it for over four decades now, but there's certainly some extra magic sprinkled over them whenever they are showing us the highs and lows of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. And if you don't chuckle as Guest explains his bizarre store that trades in cheese and guitars then I feel sorry for you.

I was really tempted to fill this review with all of my favourite quotes and moments, but I have instead tried to show some restraint. That's why it's so brief. The best comedies make you want to simply repeat the best bits to other people, and this feels like one of the best comedies I have watched in some time. More importantly, it feels like a worthy sequel to one of the all-time greats, it feels like a fitting finale for Spinal Tap, and it feels like Reiner inadvertently bookended his directorial career with two giant monuments to comedy. Like two large upright stones, if you will, that cast large shadows over the landscape.

8/10

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Netflix And Chill: The Hustle (2019)

There's a part of me that realises I am being a tiny bit unfair to The Hustle by judging it so harshly against Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, one of my favourite comedies of all time. That film is itself based on an earlier film, Bedtime Story, which I have still not seen. And here we have something that works the premise for a third time, placing female stars in where there were previously men. Those women are played by Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson, which may be a mark against the film already for some.

Wilson plays Penny Rust, a small-time con artist who enjoys preying on men and getting them to hand money over to her. She never feels guilt, there's always a point that shows her that they deserved to be parted from their cash. Hathaway is Josephine Chesterfield, a con artist who plans more sophisticated schemes for much greater rewards. When these two cross paths, Josephine tries to send Penny away. Failing at that, she instead opts to train her, using her in some cons that make use of her talents. But there can only be one to really rule the roost, which is when the two bet on extracting a set sum of money from a young tech millionaire, Thomas Westerburg (Alex Sharp).

The feature directorial debut from Chris Addison, who has had a decent bit of practice with TV work over the years, The Hustle is a strange film to judge. Addison, who has been acting onscreen for just over a decade and has been part of some great comedy shows, seems to think that he's landed the perfect leads in Hathaway and Wilson. That's not the case, and it's this wrong decision that constantly threatens to sink the film.

Not that Hathaway is bad. She just doesn't feel right for the role. The same can be said for Wilson. Her con work never feels believable, because she has to spin things further and make them sillier and sillier. Even Sharp, not at all terrible, just doesn't feel right. That's the biggest problem the film has, the cast.

The script has lines to make you laugh, many of the best ones either unchanged, or only slightly changed, from the original script. It's also good when it allows Hathaway to roll her eyes and effortlessly one-up Wilson, but not so good when things feel most adjusted to either cater to a more modern sensibility, or manipulated to be in line with the style of Wilson. There's something about this premise, two con artists who decide to compete in a beautiful location to extract a set amount of money from one target, that lends itself to a timeless quality, something that then makes any talk of apps feel jarring. And the same goes for the many insults Wilson fires at Hathaway, as chucklesome as they sometimes are in their own right.

Perhaps I am being far too harsh, perhaps I am still being too kind to make up for my self-perceived harshness, but The Hustle doesn't ever work. Even the final scenes seem to get things wrong, in a small but very obvious way (to those familiar with the previous take on the material).

4/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy the movie here.