Comedy; Satire (Mockumentary); Musical

Since our sides hurt from laughing so much by the time the end credits roll—yeah, pretty safe to go ahead and label this one a comedy.

The film's a send up of heavy metal rock bands. It skewers musicians, promoters, agents, publicists—pretty much everyone involved in the music business. Everything's fair game: the Spandex, the crazy hair, the groupies, the pretentiousness and self-importance of rock stars who see themselves as artists plumbing deep truths of the universe. Not only that, but it also spoofs the worshipful style of rock documentaries and the way they elevate rock performances to something close to the Second Coming.

This type of satirical film, which pretends to be a documentary about real events but is totally bogus, got dubbed the "mockumentary." To be a convincing parody, it has to feel real in its style and content. Spinal Tap was almost too successful in pulling that off; Reiner would hear people in the movie audiences asking variations on the question, "Why would they make a movie about such a terrible band?" (Source)

With our sincerest apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein, Shmoop will go out on a limb and call this film a musical. We don't get to hear too many of the band's songs in their entirety, but we get to hear enough of each of them that we walk out of the theater (or out of our living room, or whatever) humming the melodies of quite a few of them. The music is integral to this story. Even though it isn't a musical in the traditional sense, we're going to stick it into that box as well.

Based on some of those outfits, we're tempted to call it a horror film as well, but we'll resist.