Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Julianne Hough
Diego Boneta
Russell Brand
Alec Baldwin
Bryan Cranston
Catherine Zeta-Jones
Tom Cruise
Malin Akerman
Mary J. Blige
Paul Giamatti
Kevin Nash
Directed By:
Adam Shankman
Along the series of troubling coincidences that are my life, some are more troubling than others. For example, I always watch Russell Brand movies on a plane. It's not that I prefer to face his work in confining, claustrophobic spaces, on the contrary. I quite like him. There are few actors who play comedy with such earnest bravado, nowadays. He has a complete disregard for ridicule. It just happens that I always catch up to him on planes and I don't know why. I didn't even mean to watch ROCK OF AGES. Only, it was the only movie that seemed to work on the broken individual entertainment unit. But everything happens for a reason and it turned out to be a good film. It's not exactly high-minded art, but it's a competent musical that manages to be fun and not condescending to its subject, eighties glam rock and hair metal era. You may not know that side of me yet, but I like both musicals and eighties music, so ROCK OF AGES was bound to please me.
Don't expect an original plot. Musicals never do. Sherrie (Julianne Hough) is a small-town girl from Oklahoma, looking forward to make it big in the city of angels. She meets Drew (Diego Boneta) on her first night on the Sunset Strip. He happens to work at a legendary venue Bourbon Room, where countless live rock records have been recorded. They're both aspiring singers, so they get each other right away and fall hopelessly in love. Drew finds Sherrie a waitress job at the Bourbon, which is hosting the last ever show by iconic band Arsenal, before frontman Stacee Jaxx (Cruise) goes solo. That's where ROCK OF AGES' plot scores some points. While it will never win originality records, it goes into surprising depth, trying to recreate the scope of the social landscape of the era. There is the moral uproar against rock n' roll, financial struggle of an independent venue, doped up superstars, scumbag managers and executives, superficiality and much more shenanigans.
So what's ROCK OF AGES best asset? Easy, it's hilarious and it has a great choice of eighties singalongs. It's all I'm asking from a musical. Creator Chris D'Arenzio could've very well made a personal playlist of eighties rock, but he decided to aim for the big, rallying hits. Musicals are always better when you singalong and personally, I can't ask for better song than Bon Jovi's WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE or Foreigner's I WANT TO KNOW WHAT LOVE IS, to do this *. And they're not just thrown in there, they are integrated into the script, for very particular scenes. It's not lazily written and sure thing, not lazily interpreted. Tom Cruise has always been excellent when he wasn't asked to act seriously (remember Les Grossman?) and he plays a memorable Brett Michaels/Axl Rose mashup in ROCK OF AGES. Julianne Hough, who was abysmal in the FOOTLOOSE remake, deserves a mention for being at least a competent lead here. The scope of the movie helps as her importance fades behind the Cruise/Brand/Baldwin trio.
While the writing is strong and contains actual jokes (not that common nowadays in big productions), it has flaws **. The biggest is that infuriating, mandatory "hero's journey" structure. It's been so used and so literally interpreted, it has become the biggest joke/cliché in American movie. The hero has to reatreat to his inmost cave, fight his inner demons and complete his journey a better/stronger person than he/she was at first and blah, blah, blah. In ROCK OF AGES, it becomes an elephant in the room, because the rest of the movie is so good-natured and spontaneous, it sticks out as superficial and uninspired. I've grown such a profound distaste of this particular writing technique, I get sleepy during the inmost cave parts. Since most Pixar films are built this way, I take a mandatory twenty-minutes nap when I watch them. It became a natural body reaction. Seriously, fuck this overused, boring hero's journey structure. Like the complete spectrum of self-doubt and emotional issues could be pigeonholed within a twenty minutes segments.
Don't mind my reserves about forced passages in Hollywood screenwriting 101. It's still worth it to watch ROCK OF AGES is you like rock n' roll. You don't even need to know the songs. Tom Cruise, barechested on stage, singing POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME, is quite a sight in itself. Not much to say about Adam Shankman's direction, except maybe that it knows its place. He's by far, not the best talent associated with this movie and he knows it. He's just happy to follow the funny, witty people that wrote/acted this baby and it suits the movie just fine. We're talking of a guy who directed some of the most boring/generic stuff like A WALK TO REMEMBER and CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 2. He lets the real talent lead ROCK OF AGES, which is the right decision. I doubt you'll enjoy ROCK OF AGES as much as I did if you're 22 years old or younger, but it's possible. I loved to see the radio hits of my formative years turned into a comedic tribute in such a fun, witty and respectful way. Despite its shortcomings, ROCK OF AGES offers memorable moments and is still one of the best musicals I've seen in quite a few years.
FOUR STARS
* Foreigner's hit is reserved for what is probably the craziest scene of the movie.
** Did you know Jennifer Aniston's hubby Justin Theroux co-penned the script?