American filmmaker Rob Reiner died on December 14, along with his wife Michelle Singer Reiner. The police investigation reveals a murder and the culprit would be the director’s own son.
In these times of 1980s nostalgia, it’s worth remembering that moviegoers never forget two features Reiner made during that decade: the 1986 youth thriller “Stand by Me,” and 1989’s “Harry and Sally: Made for Each Other,” which updates Ernst Lubitsch’s romantic comedy to the end of the 20th century.
In fact, these are always the films that we remember most when we talk about Rob Reiner, and those that caused the most excitement when the first news of his death broke. These are not the only assets of his long career, which includes more than 20 feature films.
The son of another director, comedy specialist Carl Reiner, of “Um Espírito Baixou em Mim” and “Cliente Morto Não Paga”, Rob Reiner began as a television actor in the 1970s. In the following decade, he made his directorial debut with the 1984 mockumentary “Isto É Spinal Tap”.
This debut follows the confusion of a fictional rock band, who were inventing visual gimmicks for their shows, inspired by the theatricality of Alice Cooper – trinkets that, at the right moment, didn’t work. There was also an amplifier whose volume went up to 11, without this meaning a real increase in volume, among other pearls.
The director himself plays a documentarian named Marty DiBergi, an homage to Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg. This documentarian attempts to follow the group’s clumsy steps.
Interestingly, this deliciously funny film – even more so for those who like rock – motivated a sequel released in 2025, with the same cast and direction. “This Is Spinal Tap 2” makes the career of Reiner, who once again plays DiBergi, close a curious circle, started and ended with a gimmick.
Given the tragedy that precipitated his death, it is not difficult to be moved to see him on stage, in jeans and a cap, speaking passionately about the fake group that started and – we now know – all ended. At the end of his first performance, a visual joke typical of burlesque.
“This Is Spinal Tap 2” is like a rebirth. Even though it is inferior to the first, it is still quite ironic and funny, surpassing all the films Reiner has made in the last 32 years.
There are a handful of funny scenes like the one that shows the guitarist played by Christopher Guest as a cheese and guitar dealer, saying that people show up wanting to trade guitars for cheese, and vice versa. Paul McCartney and Elton John are affectionately featured in the film, as well as other musical figures.
The second part of his career went somewhat unnoticed. Indeed, “Garota Sinal Verde”, from 1985, which became “The Right Thing” on video, was a rather pale attempt at a romantic comedy whose greatest asset was the revelation of John Cusack, in his first leading role, at the age of 18.
It was in the third feature film that his name once again garnered well-deserved praise. “Stand by Me”, adaptation of a novel by Stephen King, is a wonderful reunion of child stars, led by those who will become the most famous: River Phoenix and Corey Feldman.
Four teenagers learn of the murder of a boy in the rural area of the city and decide to search for the body. A teenage adventure that becomes a poignant rite of passage thanks to the director’s sensitivity to combining drama and suspense. Then begins his best phase, with five successful films in a row.
The second of these, the fourth of his career, was “The Princess Bride,” a fable that some critics consider his finest moment in cinema, starring Cary Elwes and Robin Wright in a touching story of dreams and – why not? – class struggle. A modernization of “The Princess and the Commoner” and many other fairy tales. Despite its obvious charm, this is perhaps the weakest of these five consecutive films.
Then a new milestone appears. “Harry and Sally – Made for Each Other”, the director’s great film, in which Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal hate each other until they realize they are the perfect couple. Friends or married? This is the big question they must discover the answer to.
In the same way that Frank Capra’s “It Happened One Night” laid the foundation for the sonic romantic comedy in 1934 and Lubitsch’s “The Corner Store” perfected it in 1940, this Reiner film updates the subgenre for the 1990s, presenting an alternative, less intellectualized aspect to another possible update – Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall,” 1977.
A genre change brought the director to 1990’s “Crazy Obsession,” another Stephen King adaptation in which Kathy Bates is a fan who imprisons and tortures her greatest idol, the writer played by James Caan. It is the film that shows fanaticism as an illness and the fan as capable of anything, even committing crimes, to get closer to his idol.
There are those who do not consider a sequence of five films in a row, because “Questão de Honra”, from 1992, even more than “Louca Obsessão”, is far from unanimous. However, it is a good film about military corruption with a baptism of fire for Tom Cruise, in a role which demanded much more of him than the playboys he had played until then.
And indeed, after “A Question of Honor”, the director’s career faced a terrible decline, with this or that reasonable film amid a series of mediocrities.
If we can highlight certain aspects of “Meu Querido Presidente”, from 1995, or “Before you leave”, from 2007, the regularity of his career over the last 30 years is negatively impressive, even if he has not made very bad films. That’s not enough for someone who has shown such talent in some of his films.
Even with the artistic renaissance of “This Is Spinal Tap 2,” Reiner’s best, from the 1990s onward, may have been in his supporting acting career, with notable roles in “Sintonia de Amor,” directed by Nora Ephron in 1993, and Woody Allen’s “Shots on Broadway,” 1994.
In any case, for half a dozen fine films, Rob Reiner deserves to be revered. Not as an inventor of forms, but as an honest and versatile director.
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