Rock of Ages-- A Review

Finally sat down with the Missus and the, well now ex-Roomie last night and watched Rock of Ages. And after two hours and three minutes it still felt curiously incomplete for some reason. Don't get me wrong: I knew all the music and while I was probably too young to be a true devotee of 80s Hair Metal, it's a hard rockin' good time and I can appreciate that. But as a movie, I'm not entirely sure this worked.

Random tangent time: when I was in college a bunch of us got snuck into the Dukes of Hazzard armed with Pepsis that were more vodka than Pepsi and got pretty wasted in the theater. That movie, which I have yet to see sober was awesome. The Missus noted (and I agreed) that Rock of Ages would work a lot better if you were drunk and could sing along to all the songs.

Rock of Ages tells the story of Sherrie 'Sister' Christian (Julianne Hough) who's at the start of the moving is 'Motoring' her way to LA because she's a small town girl, living in a lonely world. Naturally, when she gets there she's immediately mugged (because that was Los Angeles in 1987, apparently.) And meets a city boy, Drew (Diego Boneta) who may or may not have been born and raised in South Detroit- who conveniently enough gets her a job, like you know, right away (it was 1987, man. The economy was slightly better... and because everyone who goes to LA looking for fame finds jobs RIGHT AWAY) at the legendary Bourbon Room, a rock n'roll club owned by Dennis (Alec Baldwin) and his right hand man Lonny (Russell Brand.)

The Bourbon Room is under threat from the uptight, Conservative, rock n'roll hating Mayor (Bryan Cranston) and his crusading wife Patricia (Catherine Zeta Jones going heavy on the craaaaaaazy eyes) and so Dennis turns to aging, washed up rocker Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) to play one final gig to save the club. Jaxx just doesn't care anymore, having broken up his band, Arsenal to go solo at the urging of his shady manager, Paul (Paul Giamatti) and when he meets a rock journalist Constance (Malin Ackerman) the two eventually fall in love.

There's some other random stuff too. Sherrie and Drew break up and Drew ends up in a boy band while Sherrie ends up working at a strip club run by Mary J. Blige (randomly) and Dennis and Lonny end up admitting their feelings for each other to the tune of REO Speedwagon's 'I Can't Fight This Feeling' (I wasn't sure whether to laugh hysterically or cry at this. Seriously bad.) In the end, it all works for the best. Rock n'roll doesn't die, blah, blah, blah.

I had some suspicions about this movie, namely that I thought the musical probably had more substance to it- and lo and behold, after a check of Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge) it turns out my suspicions were CORRECT! And if that's the case, then this movie does a piss-poor job with it's source material. At times, it feels like the writers just sat in a room and strung together every rock n'roll cliche they could think of until at the end they were struck by a weird case of liberal white panic and realized they had no African-Americans in the cast and made Mary J. Blige (a singer who rocks by the way- nothing against her at all) like the only African American in the cast and had her manage a strip club with all white dancers. WTF. That was almost, almost offensive to me... it's a gross misuse of Mary J. Blige's talents at the very least.

The best part about this movie: Tom Cruise. Seriously- its worth getting this from RedBox just to watch Tom Cruise. This might be his best role in years (which probably says something about the trajectory of his career) and if they had made a better movie he would have probably won some more kudos for it than he did. (Plus he sings. And he can actually sing, surprisingly enough.)

Overall: ** and a 1/2 out of **** Don't get me wrong- if you're having a karaoke party and want to get boozy and sing along, this is a fantastic movie. If you're looking for a good adaptation of the musical this isn't the movie for you and I think if celebrating the excesses of 80s Hair Metal was the goal, they could have done more than stringing two hours of clichés together. It's worth a RedBox rental and my apologies if you spent money to see this in the movie theater.