Comedy Archeology - Going Up To 11

The mockumentary - it’s ubiquitous as a comedy from across both film and TV now but there was a time when this wasn’t the case. Along came this film and changed all that…

Spinal Tap
In A Nutshell:- Frighteningly accurate portrait of a fading band
Why’s It So Good? That boils down to the combination of the improvisational skills of Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer combined with the commitment to the format that Rob Reiner brings in. Guest, McKean and Shearer aren’t just playing the characters - they know them inside and out and completely inhabit them. The first workprint of the film was four hours long - around an hour of extra footage has been released on the official releases over the years and the remarkable thing about it is that it’s mostly very funny. Reiner just had to be ruthless to pare the film down to the bare essentials which is, at its heart, a love story between two friends.

Of course, there have been other mockumentaries and two from recent years that have entered my repeat rotation…

What We Do In The Shadows
In A Nutshell:- Crap vampires flat-sharing in New Zealand
Why’s It So Good? The deadpan New Zealand sense of humour fits very well with the mockumentary genre but there’s also a sense of naivete and optimism that Taika Waititi brings to that sensibility. The cast are on top form (largely thanks to the three main cast members having made this as a short film some years before) and it’s got some genuine strong laughs in there. The follow up series is enjoyable (and has the nice addition of an energy vampire who feeds on people’s negative emotions) but doesn’t quite match the heights of the film.

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
In A Nutshell:- Spinal Tap for pop stars.
Why’s It So Good? It’s a film that not very many people have seen, having performed poorly at the box office, but it definitely deserves a wider audience. The product of The Lonely Island (whose current special The Unauthorised Bash Brothers on Netflix is also well worth a watch), it’s more clearly a comedy than Spinal Tap with several scenes played for broader laughs but is no less funny for that. Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone star, write and (in Schaffer and Taccone’s case) direct alongside a who’s who of comedy and music. In the same vein to Tap, even the deleted scenes are worth watching (particularly the throwing around of banal instructions as insults ina  fight - “You eat soup!”)

So if we’ve strayed into the realm of comedy that starts to closely resemble that thing that it is (often lovingly) mocking, that probably leads us on to these…