ROB REINER (1947–2025): A LIFE IN FILM

January 01, 2026

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By: Jon Abrams

Rob Reiner was the son of a legendary and legendarily beloved comedian, which was very good luck, but he quickly earned his own credits, first as a deft comic actor who starred on one of the greatest American TV series of all time, and then, even more importantly, as a director of several of the most memorable films of the past half-century. There is no understating that fact: Many of Rob Reiner's films are embedded in late-20th century American popular culture, as thoroughly and as enthusiastically as THE GODFATHER or STAR WARS. Nobody is using a chart or a stopwatch to clock how frequently movie quotes and performances are referenced or imitated, but Reiner's best-loved movies have to be towards the top of the heap as far as how many times they're invoked.

Yet when cinephiles get around to listing their top-five filmmakers, I never hear anybody mention Rob Reiner. Isn't that strange?

My personal favorite filmmaker is John Carpenter. I feel that his thematic preoccupations and the worldview that his films collectively represent is closest to the way I personally see life (and death). I love how his movies look. I love how his movies sound. I love how his movies make me feel. John Carpenter had a legendary run, starting with ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 and topping out around THEY LIVE (or IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, if you want to accord him a Mulligan), that I would argue rivals or tops the best work of any film director ever. All of that said, John Carpenter's first movie was DARK STAR. A charming movie that I have a lot of affection for, and one without which we'd never have ALIEN. But it's not one I go back to often, and I don't think the greater moviegoing populace values it as much as I do. Who's your favorite director? Steven Spielberg? His first theatrical film was THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS. A fine film, but still best known as Spielberg's first theatrical film. Love James Cameron? His first film was PIRANHA II. I'm into it, but remember this thought spiral is about the cultural footprint of the debut film.

Rob Reiner's debut film was THIS IS SPINAL TAP.

It's not a competition, and all these filmographies can be great, and all these filmographies are great, in my opinion, but I'm saying this to illustrate that I think we all undervalued Rob Reiner while we had him.

THIS IS SPINAL TAP (1984) was immediately recognized at the time for what it was, and it's only accumulated in estimation over the years. It's considered one of the greatest achievements in American film comedy. SPINAL TAP was a pioneer in the then relatively under-explored mockumentary subgenre, preceded a few years earlier by Monty Python's Eric Idle and his project The Rutles, sure, but that didn't land with the impact that SPINAL TAP did. And here's the measure of its cultural saturation: Even people who haven't seen the movie get the references: "He died in a bizarre gardening accident...""These go to eleven." "Stonehenge." (Side note: Rob Reiner is even credited with the term "mockumentary" itself.) Understand that if SPINAL TAP was the only movie that Rob Reiner ever made, his place in film history would be secure. But it turns out he was just getting started.

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THE SURE THING (1985) is a movie that I shouldn't talk authoritatively about, since I have to admit I haven't seen it! Ridiculous, I know. John Cusack is one of my favorite stars, and this was the first movie to position him as one. (His most notable role before this was a minor part as a geek in SIXTEEN CANDLES.) We have Rob Reiner to thank for John Cusack.

This movie also starred the very underrated Daphne Zuniga, maybe best known now for a movie she did with Rob Reiner's dad's buddy Mel Brooks. THE SURE THING is one of those movies that plenty of people my age grew up with. It depends a bit on where you lived and which HBO rotation you got.

For me, BETTER OFF DEAD was the John Cusack movie from 1985 that I saw dozens of times. I always wanted to see this one, but it just never happened. Maybe I will track it down now. It's as good a time as any. The director of photography was Robert Elswit, now better known for all the movies he made with Paul Thomas Anderson. One thing I dug about Rob Reiner's movies, for a guy who came out of TV, is that they always looked like movies.

STAND BY ME (1986) was the first collaboration between Rob Reiner and the work of writer Stephen King. Again, this is a movie that is known even by people who haven't seen it. It was essential for the young talent it unleashed upon American cinema, all perfectly cast and directed to excellence. Some of the best performances ever seen by child actors are in this movie.

Another one of those things that I can't measure scientifically, but that feels innately true, is that this was the first, or at least one of the first, to use an oldies song as the title and to expertly use that song to elevate the movie's profile in all the promotion. This was a major trend in the 1980s and 1990s, in movies with varied success, the hits and the misses, from JOHNNY BE GOOD to PRETTY WOMAN to RUNNING ON EMPTY (another one starring River Phoenix!) to EARTH ANGEL to CALENDAR GIRL (another one starring Jerry O'Connell!) to WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN to BORN TO BE WILD. Rob Reiner may or may not have started this mega-trend, but it sure feels like he did. For a truly beautiful reflection on STAND BY ME, please read this vintage DG piece from my good friend Jamie Righetti.

THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987)... Well, I mean, that's the one, right? This is arguably the movie Rob Reiner will always be remembered for, although again, you can say that for a bunch of them. But there's something next-level special about this film. It feels like one of those perfect moments. This one I saw in the theaters, at Eric Levy's birthday party, at just the right age. Weird choice, to take a bunch of insane little boys to see a sweet and romantic fairy tale of a movie, but it worked for me. Could I have related to Fred Savage's character any more? I didn't think I wanted to see this movie. There wasn't any Batman in it. But just as Peter Falk promised, the story got me.

This is a perfect film.

It is perfectly cast. It has a perfect look, courtesy of Adrian Biddle (also the director of photography on ALIENS and WILLOW). It has a humble sound, courtesy of Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits: Humble, sweet, sweeping, and winning. And did I mention how perfectly cast this movie is? I just happened to watch THE PRINCESS BRIDE again earlier this year. I was struck by the efficiency of William Goldman's script (adapted from his own novel, which I highly recommend). I was struck by André the Giant's performance (the best one ever by a professional wrestler that isn't Roddy Piper in THEY LIVE). I was struck by so very many things that I could mention, but that could run longer than the movie, which is itself a brisk 98 minutes, owing to Goldman's work (just the good parts) and of course to the vision of Rob Reiner, who blended the sublime comedy of a movie like SPINAL TAP with the romanticism of THE SURE THING with the lightness of touch and surprising gravity of STAND BY ME to produce a true American classic.

Any director could be proud for all eternity if THE PRINCESS BRIDE was the only movie she or he ever made, but again, Rob Reiner wasn't done.

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY... (1989) is Reiner working, again, with a writer of elite-level skills, Nora Ephron. Please take a moment to note that Rob Reiner's best work is as good as it is because he was smart enough to know a good story when he saw it. This is just a great romantic comedy, both old-fashioned and refreshingly modern. I will be honest and admit that, as is probably obvious about me, romantic comedy is not my first-choice genre, and I'm not really the world's biggest Billy Crystal fan, but he's pretty inarguably on-point here, and Meg Ryan is really the archetypal American romantic-comedy star. I'm sure there are people out there somewhere who can't stand Meg Ryan, but I've never met any, and I wouldn't want to. She is irresistibly likable, maybe never more anywhere else than this movie (though I'm partial to ARMED AND DANGEROUS and INNERSPACE and JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO and sure, also Nora Ephron's own SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE). You've also got two of the greatest "best friend" casting coups of all time in Carrie Fisher and Bruno Kirby. Oh right, and maybe the actual best-ever Ralph Bellamy in Bill Pullman.

And one more time for the cool kids in the back: "I'll have what she's having." Even if you never saw this movie, if you watch TV or movies made in America, you know this movie.

MISERY (1990) reunited Rob Reiner with both Stephen King and hall-of-fame screenwriter William Goldman. What I love about this is that it's a Stephen King adaptation that could not possibly be more different than STAND BY ME. I love how it takes James Caan, one of the most purely kinetic stars of the 1970s, and traps him in a bed for most of the movie. I love how Reiner took Kathy Bates, who might otherwise have been doomed to thankless minor roles, and well-deservedly elevated her to household-name status.

This is a movie where James Caan, Hollywood movie star, Sonny Corleone for Pete's sake, is menaced by a woman who looks like someone you might live next door to. Can you imagine? It's a keen subversion, a neat idea from King that Reiner ably capitalized upon. I had forgotten that Barry Sonnenfeld shot this movie (and WHEN HARRY MET SALLY...) Before becoming a director himself, he was so sharp and creative with the camera. (RAISING ARIZONA. I rest my case.) If you look at those names on the poster you'll also see that Reiner always enjoyed working with veterans, in this case Frances Sternhagen, Richard Farnsworth, and my distant cousin Lauren Bacall.

My hunch, and I'm only now going back to really look at his interviews, is that Rob Reiner was a student of film, that he really knew his stuff and enjoyed working as part of the continuum of Hollywood films. I feel like MISERY is a movie that Hitchcock could have made, although even he would not have had the inspiration to cast Kathy Bates.

A FEW GOOD MEN (1992) is a movie that everyone knows. And it's got everyone in it. Seriously: Of all the incredibly talented casts that Rob Reiner commanded, this one is the most. Nicholson. Tom Cruise. Demi Moore. That's just the starters. Kevin Bacon? Okay, well that makes A FEW GOOD MEN the Rosetta Stone to beating that Six Degrees game every damn time.

No disrespect to Jack, he's the man, but go to the deeper cuts. Did you remember that the late, great JT Walsh was in this movie? I didn't even remember that Kiefer was in it. How about Cuba Gooding Jr., a few years before he and Cruise did JERRY MAGUIRE? Hey, it's James Marshall from Twin Peaks! Would it mean anything to you f I said the names Xander Berkeley, John M. Jackson, or Matt Craven? It certainly should! Christopher Guest is in this movie. Christopher Guest. Yes, from SPINAL TAP. Yes, from THE PRINCESS BRIDE.

Rob Reiner was an actor himself, an actor who could do drama as well as comedy. This clearly proved useful in wrangling so many different creative personalities and acting styles. He was a great director. And this movie looks terrific too: On this one, Reiner worked with Robert Richardson, who worked with Oliver Stone and later, with Tarantino on most of his best-looking movies.

Am I a big fan of A FEW GOOD MEN? I am not. Aaron Sorkin is almost never to my tastes. (Exception to prove the rule.) But what a credit to a director that the voice of the writer comes through. What confidence on Reiner's part to allow that voice to persevere. He believed in that script and that's what he shot. And a lot of people love this movie! That's fine. This filmography is so diverse that there's something here for everybody. Kind of hard to reject Reiner's work on the whole. I think it's as solid a resume as a mainstream Hollywood director has ever achieved.

I won't keep going film for film through the IMDb page, because I am coming back to my main point: I think maybe the reason that people underrate Rob Reiner is exactly because his body of work was so diverse. He was a true old-school Hollywood craftsman. What do the seven films listed above have in common? Not a whole hell of a lot, aside from a few recurring actors and the fact that they're all good.

The auteur theory holds the director up as the author of the finished film. I don't think Rob Reiner would consider himself an auteur, and that's not to say that being an auteur is a bad thing. It's just not what he was. He was a creative person who was interested in a variety of stories, and he told so many of them well. I tend to agree that art is subjective, and what one person thinks is great doesn't strike another in the same way. But I also think there are objective criteria that go into a craft like filmmaking, and I would strongly argue that these first seven films are fairly difficult to argue against. They're well-conceived, well-cast, well-acted, well-shot, well-directed.

After A FEW GOOD MEN, maybe things got a little more subjective. The late Roger Ebert would like to remind you what he personally felt about NORTH (1994) (I've never seen it myself.) THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT (1995) is one I remember liking quite a lot, despite (or in this case, because of) another script from Aaron Sorkin and a lead performance by Michael Douglas, who I am apathetic about at best. But as Reiner's frequent collaborator William Goldman famously said, "Nobody knows anything." GHOSTS OF MISSISSIPI (1996) had several strong performances and overtly revealed Reiner's well-known social conscience and humanist perspective. I have to confess that the last Rob Reiner film that I saw theatrically, or even at all, was RUMOR HAS IT (2005).

This movie, with a script by Ted Griffin (RAVENOUS), starred Jennifer Aniston, who is arguably as close to a next-generation Meg Ryan as you're gonna get, though the central conflict finds her character torn between the choice of Kevin Costner and Mark Ruffalo, which to my mind isn't a choice at all, although to be fair, I'm not oriented in that direction so I may be disqualified from voting. I do really wish they had gone with the French poster here in America, though.

In addition to his work as a director, Reiner was a producer of pervasive influence. Without his production company Castle Rock Entertainment, there would be no Seinfeld. There surely would be no SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION. Again, these two projects alone display how vast of a ripple effect Rob Reiner has had on American popular culture. He also continued to appear on screen, in movies as tremendous as THE WOLF OF WALL STREET.  I hate the fact that his career has ended as suddenly as it has, but I see a truly beautiful symmetry in the way that his final film as director and actor is SPINAL TAP II: THE END CONTINUES. (Haven't seen it yet, but the title makes me chuckle every time.)

Maybe it would be nice if this tribute ended with me realizing that Rob Reiner was one of my favorite filmmakers all along. Top Five!

That wouldn't be accurate. I love several of his movies very much. I have great fondness for Rob Reiner and his father Carl, who were famed residents of the city where I grew up. Though I never knew him, obviously, I have great admiration for Rob Reiner as a human being. He was a man of incredible talent and forceful conviction, who nevertheless by all accounts (except maybe that one by one of the worst creatures on the planet) was a lovely and caring man and a loyal and thoughtful friend. I feel terrible sadness for the almost unspeakably awful way that Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle left this existence. That we don't still have Rob Reiner here making movies and performing is a major loss all around, but mainly it's a loss for his family and friends.

Thinking about Rob Reiner and what his movies mean to me has reminded me of why it's important in life to try to find ways to acknowledge the impact that people have on us. I am glad to have gone back to think on the movies he made that I have seen, and those that I haven't yet, because every filmmaker's list of credits represents the life they lived, and it also reflects the lives of each of us in the audience. While this tribute has been written from my point of view, I would love so much to read a piece on the same movies from each and every person who might be reading it. Each one would be different. Each one would reflect different favorite moments and completely unique memories. I would be so curious to read yours. I am so sad that Rob Reiner is gone, but I am grateful that he was here to share his art with us all.

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