The Princess Bride (1987)

"Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates?"

"Yes."

"Morons."

It's a genuine mystery: This Is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest films ever. How, then, can pretty much the same team- Rob Reiner directs, Christopher Guest has a major role- produce something so unfunny as this.

I can see what it’s trying to do- play with the silliness of the tropes and cliches. Hence we have exaggerated tropes such as a princess with absurd faith that her ridiculously heroic man will save her, and a Spanish swordsman who lives to avenge his father’s death. But none of this is addressed with any real wit, and it’s obly the names (Prince Humperdinck) and cameos from the likes of Peter Cook and Mel Smith that tell us this is intended to be a comedy.

All this is narrated by Columbo to his annoying, sport-obsessed grandson for no apparent reason, in a framing sequence that has no obvious reason to be there. It describes a weird mediaeval word where fictional countries mix with real ones and people seem to have heard of Australia. And where there are, er, “rodents of unusual size” which look awfully like a man in a suit. It’s clearly meant to be funny. It isn’t. An odd misfire.

I very strongly suspect, mind, that the “battle of wits” scene strongly influenced the first episode of Sherlock.

This Is Spinal Tap (1984)

"Well, I don't really think that the end can be assessed, as of itself, as being the end, because what does the end feel like? It's like saying when you try to extrapolate the end of the universe, you say 'if the universe is indeed infinite, then how… what does that mean'? How far is all the way, and then if it stops, what's stopping it, and what's behind what's stopping it? So, what's the end, you know, is my question to you…"

Yes, I know. I've reviewed two musicals in a row, sort of. I love this film, though. It isn't so much that it's laugh-out-loud funny; in fact, considering the subject matter, the humour is actually quite gentle and ironic. There are some nicely quirky bits that are funny because they ring true- Nigel's disgruntlement with the small bread on his rider, and the band panicking at being unable to find the stage being two of the funniest.

The songs are superb, hilarious pastiches from throughout the history of rock from grainy monochrome footage of a mid 60s incarnation reminiscent of the Who to a cynical hippy cash-in from a few years later. They're genuinely great rock songs, and the lyrics are the funniest thing in the film, from the arse-clenchingly ignorant pretentiousness of Stonehenge to the jaw-dropping sexism of Big Bottom, probably the greatest ever song about anal sex, God help us.

Most of the time, though, the band is a piss-take of the heavy metal at the time, with the Stonehenge debacle even being taken from a real life experience of the Black Sabbath line-up of the early '80s. This is heavy metal before the LA-dominated "hair rock" began to arrive in the mid-'80s; the vibe is much more NWOBHM, with flying V's and stage moves taken straight out of the repertoire of Kiss.

One thing that dates this film more than anything is the idea that rock stars are past it by the age of forty-five; that sort of attitude would become passé with the advent of Live Aid just a year later. A real life Spinal Tap would have survived the Yoko issues, the declining audiences and the ropey "big in Japan" period to be raking it in today, no matter how many drummers had to die to get there.

The drummer bloodbath is a prime example of how improvisation leads to so many of the best things about the film. Many of the exchanges remind me of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Derek and Clive. It's a real strength of the "mockumentary" format.

This is a brilliantly crafted piece of observational comedy and a compulsory fixture of every self-respecting tour bus, although it probably helps if, like me, you're a total rock 'n' roll anorak. This is a film so good that it inspired not only an album cover but also a considerably less funny pseudo-remake from no less a band than Metallica. Surely there could be no higher compliment.