text: Critical reception This Is Spinal Tap is widely regarded as one of the best films of 1984. The film holds a 96% rating on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes based on 67 reviews, with an average rating of 8.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Smartly directed, brilliantly acted, and packed with endlessly quotable moments, This Is Spinal Tap is an all-time comedy classic." On
  Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four out of four and wrote "This Is Spinal Tap is one of the funniest, most intelligent, most original films of the year. The satire has a deft, wicked touch. Spinal Tap is not that much worse than, not that much different from, some successful rock bands." Ebert later placed the film on his ten best list of 1984 and would later include it in his Great Movies list in 2001 where he called it "one of the funniest movies ever made". Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune also awarded four out of four, writing, "It is so well done, in fact, that unless you are clued in beforehand, it might take you a while to realize that the rock group under dissection in This Is Spinal Tap does not really exist." Janet Maslin of The New York Times praised it as "a witty, mischievous satire, and it's obviously a labor of love." In 2002, This Is Spinal Tap was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.