Maybe a 'Spinal Tap' sequel isn't the worst idea?

Maybe.

The members of Spinal Tap do not look like this anymore.

There are a lot of bad ideas swirling around Hollywood lately, most of them efforts to revive moribund intellectual properties long past their expiration dates. Do we really need another “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movie or a new “Naked Gun”? (Okay, that one actually looks pretty funny.)

But the one that had been giving me the most trepidation was the cast of the 1984 mock rockumentary “This is Spinal Tap” going back to the well 41 years later for a legacy sequel, “This is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”

The original movie, chronicling a hapless heavy metal band’s slow fade into irrelevance, is a classic, one I rented and watched over and over again in the ‘80s. It was one of the first DVDs I bought, and not only did I watch all the deleted scenes, but I listened to the very funny commentary track featuring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer in character as Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins and Derek Smalls. I should be the target audience for a sequel.

But the idea of digging up Spinal Tap in 2025 seems like a truly terrible idea that could only sully memories of the original. So I thought. Then my brother and I saw a “41st Anniversary Screening” of the 1984 film that’s in theaters now, and included a clip from “The End Continues,” which will be released Sept. 12.

And you know what? Maybe, just maybe, a new “Spinal Tap” movie might work. In part because the cast and director Rob Reiner seem aware that they could end up looking ridiculous. In fact, they seem to welcome it.

‘Gimme Some Money’

It’s hard for me to even evaluate the original film – I’ve seen it so many times that the grooves have worn smooth, every quotable line memorized by heart. It was a lot of fun to see it in a theater with other Gen-X obsessives, and we laughed a lot, but it was sort of like listening to one of the first albums you bought in high school. Lots of enjoyment, but no surprises.

I also do not know what a younger audience would make of “This is Spinal Tap.” The film is so hermetically sealed in its era, the bombastic ‘80s music scene when aging musicians from the ‘60s and ‘70s still loomed large in pop culture. To the Spotify generation, all the talk of record sales and radio station airplay must sound inscrutable, like hearing about how music used to be recorded on wax cylinders.

After the movie was over, there was a short clip from “The End Continues.” I braced myself. We saw a new character, some kind of agent, talking to the band members (who are offscreen) about the lucrative potential for doing a Spinal Tap memorial concert, which might be tricky as none of them have died yet.

Then the camera cuts to the current-day members of Spinal Tap, and it was like a jump scare. Guest, McKean and Shearer look so old in their frizzy wigs and costumes. The audience gasp-laughed at the sight of them.

‘Rock ‘n ‘ Roll Creation’

What makes it so funny, I realized in retrospect, is that they’re doing the opposite of what legacy sequels usually do, which is to try to convince us that these older actors haven’t lost a step. Tom Cruise can still fly a jet plane in “Top Gun: Maverick,” right? Sarah Jessica Parker can explore sex and the city on “. . . And Just Like That.” Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis (Guest’s wife, by the way) can still draw laughs in “Freakier Friday.”

The projects are of varying quality (I loved “Maverick”), but there is a smell of desperation about these reboots. Not just the desperation of studios trying to capitalize on familiar old intellectual properties, but of actors trying to pretend that they haven’t lost a step over the decades, that they still are as energetic and vibrant as they ever were. It’s like cinematic Botox.

“Spinal Tap II,” on the other hand, seems to be leaning hard in the other direction, mining the inherent ridiculousness of these respected actors (McKean was just on Broadway in “Glengarry Glen Ross”) returning to these roles 40 years later, putting on the frizzy wigs and tight pants one last time.

As so many real-life elderly rockers still drag themselves out onto lucrative tours and refuse to age gracefully (KISS’ farewell tour is in its third decade by now, right?), there’s a lot of material for “Spinal Tap II” to satirize here, more than I expected. At their age, it might be hazardous for Spinal Tap to turn it all the way back up to 11. But I can see the potential of it hitting a 7 or an 8.