Consumption today is driven by the algorithm: “If you liked that, you’ll love this …” But Rob Reiner was a film-maker who beat the algorithm in the days before there was even one to beat. He was impossible to predict, at least during his golden years. How could one man make the most inspired mockumentary of all time, a handful of zinging romcoms, a coming-of-age yarn, a knowing fairytale comedy, a gruesome yet screamingly camp thriller and a hokey-but-fun courtroom drama? Well, he did – and all in the first decade of his directing career.
US audiences loved him first as an actor: he was the liberal son-in-law known as Meathead in nearly 200 episodes of the late-1970s sitcom All in the Family, based on the UK favourite Till Death Us Do Part. He remained in front of the camera for his 1984 directorial debut This Is Spinal Tap, which chronicled an entire band of meatheads. In fact, his face is the very first thing we see: he plays the ingratiating documentary-maker Marty DiBergi, an affectionate parody of Martin Scorsese as glimpsed in the off-stage scenes of The Last Waltz, his concert film about the Band. Spinal Tap’s chief target, though, was the speed with which fame can turn you dumb – or make idiots believe themselves to be geniuses. The heavy metal band, played by Michael McKean, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer, put it best: “It’s such a fine line between stupid and clever.”
Part of the joy of This Is Spinal Tap was that it trickled out into the world without much success or fanfare, so that the home-video audiences who stumbled upon it had the sensation of having discovered the film entirely by themselves. Reiner’s achievement was striking: he was co-creating and shaping improvisatory material in an innovative way, but still insisting on the kind of rigour typical of precision-engineered screwball. There’s not a second of dead or wasted time in the movie, which clocks in at under 85 minutes.
He proved himself adept at old-fashioned odd-couple comedy in his next film, The Sure Thing, which re-tooled Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night for the Brat Pack generation. An early showcase for the unruly charm of John Cusack, it wasn’t a hit either, but it did show that Reiner could make slick but distinctive Hollywood product, and it established the rhythm that would mark that first decade of work: make them quick, make them good, and move on.
His next film, Stand By Me, adapted from Stephen King’s short story The Body, about four teenage pals trekking into the woods to find a corpse, was drenched in sentimental indulgence: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?” (Um, yes.) But if ever there were an antidote to such banality, it lies in Reiner’s glorious direction of his young cast, including Wil Wheaton and River Phoenix, both painfully raw as boys undervalued or neglected by their fathers.
Reiner freely admitted that these were part of a gallery of self-portraits, also including Tom Cruise as the military lawyer daunted by his late father’s reputation in A Few Good Men. These expressed the insecurities he felt around his own father, Carl Reiner, who had initially doubted his son’s talents. Reiner Sr happened also to be a widely adored actor turned director, but one whose popularity threatened to overwhelm his son before he’d had the chance to forge his own career. “There was a time when getting out from Carl’s shadow was important to Rob,” observed Reiner Jr’s friend, Billy Crystal.
It was Crystal who had a cameo as a mime waiter in This Is Spinal Tap (“Mime is money”) and formed part of the ensemble in The Princess Bride, Reiner’s zany fairytale follow-up to Stand By Me, which continued the Reiner pattern of overlooked gems, future cult favourites and sleeper hits.
That pattern was broken by his next three pictures, all of which were boxoffice bull’s-eyes straight out of the gate. When Harry Met Sally, sparklingly written by Nora Ephron, was performed by Crystal and Meg Ryan with a vitality that suggested they were the first ever “will they/won’t they?” couple in romcom history. (A shout-out is due, too, to Reiner’s mother Estelle, whose deadpan line reading – “I’ll have what she’s having” – is the punchline to Ryan’s fake-orgasm deli scene.) He then went back to the Stephen King, with greater success this time, for Misery, a ridiculously enjoyable thriller, far camper than I think Reiner intended it to be, about an incapacitated novelist (James Caan) held prisoner by an adoring but unhinged fan, played by Kathy Bates, who won an Oscar.
Reiner, on the other hand, didn’t. He was never nominated, not even for A Few Good Men, his next hit, which pitted Cruise memorably against Jack Nicholson, and was nominated for best picture. It didn’t seem to matter, since he was shaping up to be, in the words of his second movie, a sure thing. In terms of quality, if not boxoffice, he was correct to say in 1994 that he had made seven pictures with “not a stinker” among them. With Spinal Tap-esque hubris, that boast came on the eve of the release of North, a wacky picaresque, another study of a forsaken son, and his first outright failure. In 2024, Rolling Stone ranked North second on a list of 50 Terrible Movies by Great Directors, beaten only by Francis Ford Coppola’s Jack.
For the next 30 years, there wasn’t much to write home about. The American President, Reiner’s wound-licking follow-up to North, featured winning performances from Annette Bening and Michael Douglas, and returned Reiner to his Capra-esque comfort zone. Thereafter, it was all awards-bait (the civil rights drama Ghosts of Mississippi), undistinguished romcoms (The Story of Us, Rumour Has It), whimsy (The Magic of Belle Isle) and even a needless, so-so sequel to his one masterpiece (Spinal Tap II: The End Continues). Documentary – he produced God & Country, about the rise of Christian nationalism, and directed Albert Brooks: Defending My Life – was one area where he seemed still to be experimenting fruitfully.
The afterglow from those early pictures, though, was always strong enough to carry him through. Reiner may not go down in history as one of the greats but, for that first decade at least, he delivered the goods.
