A
few years back some friends invited me to see a Led Zeppelin laser
light show. I sat just a few rows away from Christian Slater. True
story! What followed was an ipod shuffling of the band's greatest hits
as lasers strobbed and created rudimentary images of wizards riding
horses across the planes. Walking out, my friends complained that the
show was lame. I didn't protest but I couldn't help thinking, what were they expecting? We went to a cheesy laser light show and that's exactly
what we got.
What I'm getting
at is that Rock of Ages, director Adam Shankman's big screen adaptation of Broadway's version of 80's Guitar Hero,
is basically a two hour laser light show. It's cheesy, has no depth -
whatsoever, not even accidentally - but occasionally there's some
fun tunes and pretty things to look at.
The
movie opens with Sherrie, (Julianne Hough) a bright-eyed girl fresh of
the bus from Oklahoma arriving on Hollywood's 1980-something Sunset Strip. Her dream is
to become a singer and it isn't long before she meets-cute with another singing hopeful, Drew
(Diego Boneta) who gets her a job at a club that's the epicenter of rock
on the strip. The joint's owner, played by Alec
Baldwin, is hosting the swan song performance of a huge rock band called
Arsenal, headed by their comically zonked-out lead singer Stacee Jaxx
(Tom Cruise.) This must see
performance should help Baldwin's character reconcile the rent he's
struggling to pay, thanks in part (I think) to a group of anti-rock
mothers led by a Tipper Gore inspired caricature played by Catherine
Zeta-Jones. I say, I think, because as much as the mothers sing and kick in the air, they never really seem to pose any sort of tangible threat.
With that in mind, the only real drama in the story come from a misunderstanding so thin and contrived that it makes the similarly silly misunderstandings from Three's Company seem as if they were crafted by Tolstoy.
As
far as acting and performing is concerned, everyone here is not only
game, but admirably committed. There's Malin Akerman as a Rolling Stone reporter, Paul Giamatti as Jaxx's skeezy
manager, and an underused Bryan Cranston as the mayor of Los
Angeles. Cruise's turn as Jaxx, it should be noted, is actually a lot of fun. My friend pointed out that
when someone as impossible to hide as Tom Cruise can act so ridiculous
and actually make you forget he's Tom Cruise for a while, that's a quite
a
feat. It's just too bad his arc doesn't give
him much to do with it.
Additionally, I told some friends who had seen the musical that I was a little
disappointed the story didn't even go close to delving into darkness, or
even surface level thoughtfulness. For example, at the end of her rope,
Sherrie ends up working at a strip club - the cleanest, most colorful
and friendliest strip club in town apparently. Oh and it's run by Mary J.
Blige who the film spends about 11 seconds showing kicking out an
ex-boyfriend or husband or someone who is apparently a problem, but
since that's the total amount of time the film spends on it, my sentence
here is already too long for me to have even brought it up. Anyway, the
club... I was confused because this was apparently supposed to be
Sherrie's lowest moment but that was never conveyed in any discernible
way at all. It was simply an excuse for another song and some
(admittedly) amazing acrobatics by some talented pole dancers.
I was also told that the taming
of this story from the
stage incarnation doesn't end there. Major plot points that would cast main characters in
whole new lights and a more sobering ending have been scrubbed down to
essentially a two hour, feel good, let's-not-worry-about-anything karaoke sing along. There are so many potential obstacles for these
characters to contend with: rock n' roll's impending decline, the closing of Tower Records and all that implies, studio manufactured pop music's take-over on the
radio. The movie does touch on the pop music thing a little but all these
other ripe complications and themes aren't even given a moments thought. I'm not saying the movie
shouldn't be fun, but isn't the point of a good story seeing characters
we like overcoming opposition?
So, still
interested in this movie? Do you just want to see some good looking
actors sing songs you love? Then I say go for it. And after all my pontificating you may be
wondering, so what did I ultimately think of the movie? Well, there's
certainly a more interesting version of this movie and that isn't what they
decided to put on screen here, but at the same time, I fully recognize that Rock of Ages is just a laser light show. Set your expectations accordingly and it's occasionally amusing and at least pretty to look at.
