They built this movie…(dramatic pause)…They built this movie on Rock ‘N Roll. And a half-naked Tom Cruise. Those are literally the two elements that keep this film adaptation of the long-running Broadway musical “Rock of Ages” from completely crumbling apart. This is not your typical movie, or your typical movie musical.
The time is 1987. A small town girl living in a lonely world named Sherrie, played by Julianne Hough (“Footloose”) heads-off to Hollywood hoping to make it big as a singer. She meets-up with Drew (played by newcomer Diego Boneta), who works at The Bourbon, the most popular club on the strip. He’s also a wanna-be singer with dreams of becoming a star. He gets Sherrie a job at the club and soon they’re falling in love. But, as often happens in the movies, a misunderstanding fouls things up.
At the same time, the Mayor’s wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) wants to shut The Bourbon down, mainly because of Stacee Jaxx (Cruise), a rock legend who’s performing at the club for the last time with his band Arsenal before he goes solo.
There are also sub-plots involving Stacee’s manager (Paul Giamatti), Malin Akerman, who plays a “Rolling Stone” reporter doing a story on Jaxx, Mary J. Blige, who becomes Sherrie’s new friend, and Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand, the owner and manager of the struggling club. But even with all this star-power, “Rock of Ages” is as thin as an old record album.
The dominating force in the movie is the music. The musical numbers (there are over 30 songs on the soundtrack) overpower the story and characters, to the point where you hardly care about either. The exception is Jaxx. Cruise who owns every scene that he’s in (and he’s in a lot). The rest of the time is spent watching actors sing covers of classic rocks songs that you wish were being sung by the original groups. With other recent movie muscials such as “Mamma Mia!” and “Hairspray” the songs didn’t over-power the story and the characters they way they do here. And those scripts had more meat and more developed characters.
There are some fun production numbers in “Rock of Ages” and all the actors deserve credit for their singing efforts. Even Giamatti hits a few good notes. Some of the scenes include two songs meshed together, which I’m sure worked better in the stage version, where you could see both performances happening at once. Cutting back and forth between songs on screen doesn’t work. And, of course, most of the singing is dubbed-in, some scenes done better than others.
What “Rock of Ages” has going for it are two things: 1) Tom Cruise, who really pulls-off the aging, wild rock star roll. And 2) There’s a campy, silliness that works – at times. When the bus driver starts singing along with Sherrie in the movie’s first scene you know “Rock of Ages” isn’t going to take itself too seriously. There are also some clever touches and some funny lines. I just wish there were more. If this was intended to be a muscial/comedy (and I think it was) it needed more comedy.
“Rock of Ages” is rated PG-13 for some language and adult content. It’s appropriate for teens and up. One thing I can guarantee: you will leave the theater singing some of these songs. Unfortunately that may be the only thing you remember from the film (that and, for the ladies, Cruises’s tatoos).
On The Official LCJ Report Card, “Rock of Ages” gets a slightly generous C.
When it comes to movie musicals – “Some will win, some will lose”, but as for “Rock of Ages”, I had nothing but a so-so time.