‘Rock of Ages’ not for everyone

“Rock of Ages” is a musi­cal that fol­lows an aspir­ing young singer, Sher­rie (Hough) on her jour­ney from Okla­homa to Hol­ly­wood. She has hopes of becom­ing a star and soon finds out how hard it can be to make a liv­ing in the big city. Sher­rie goes through many trans­for­ma­tions while search­ing for herself.

This movie has many inter­wo­ven character-based plots that are all set to an 80s rock com­pi­la­tion that is very rem­i­nis­cent of a bowl­ing alley juke­box which hasn’t been updated since the intro­duc­tion of the com­pact disc. You are led down so many paths in this movie that it is often hard to know what it is try­ing to say to you. The main story fol­lows Sher­rie as she learns about life and love. Another fol­lows Drew (Boneta) as he works his way up the ranks from bar­tender to rocker to boy band and back to rocker. One sto­ry­line focuses on the strug­gling venue owner, Den­nis (Bald­win) who just wants to pro­vide a fun atmos­phere where peo­ple can go to enjoy live music. Lonny (Brand) is an Eng­lish rebel that is look­ing for love and ends up find­ing it in an odd place dur­ing a per­for­mance of REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feel­ing.” Patri­cia (Zeta-Jones), who plays the mayor’s wife, spear­heads a church-based group of women that are try­ing to shut down Dennis’s venue in an effort to clean up the Sun­set Strip and keep it free from sin. Paul (Gia­matti) is a money-driven band man­ager that spends his time look­ing for the next big act in music so that he can exploit it and fill his pock­ets. Then there is, Stacee Jaxx (Cruise). Jaxx is a rock icon that is reck­less, untamed and lonely. I know this sounds like a lot to fol­low, but it does all come together by the end of the movie.

Tom Cruise is one of the more eas­ily rec­og­nized names in this cast. His career has spawned a very diverse set of char­ac­ters. “Jerry Maguire” was a huge hit mostly due to his inspir­ing por­trayal of the title char­ac­ter. Cruise’s role as Ethan Hunt in the “Mis­sion Impos­si­ble” series has made it a note­wor­thy action fran­chise for over a decade. Stacee Jaxx in “Rock of Ages” is the very sex­u­ally explicit lead singer of the fic­ti­tious rock band, Arse­nal. Jaxx is the embod­i­ment of every­thing that you would imag­ine a rock star of that mag­ni­tude to be. He even has his own pet mon­key named, Hey Man who he trained to bring him bot­tles of scotch when he’s thirsty. Cruise actu­ally sup­plied the vocals for all of the songs that his char­ac­ter per­formed in the movie. They were sur­pris­ingly admirable. Not only does he do his own stunts, but after 4 months of pro­fes­sional train­ing he does his own vocals, too.

As the crowd was leav­ing the the­ater, I noticed a lot of them singing aloud the many songs from the movie. It is infec­tious in every way and it is sup­posed to be. The direc­tor and pro­duc­ers want you to walk around singing these songs so that you can tie mem­o­ries of them to this movie. They also want you to get them into your friends’ and cowork­ers’ heads as well so that they will want to go see this movie. I know that “Rock of Ages” is a musi­cal, but so is “The Phan­tom of the Opera,” which I really like. For this rea­son, I stood back for a moment and thought of the movie with­out the sound­track to lead the viewer. Would it have its own legs to carry the story along with­out the music? Is there any com­pelling dia­log or act­ing that would make this movie some­thing that I could see myself want­ing to watch again? “The Phan­tom of the Opera” is very pow­er­ful. It has a great story, char­ac­ters and a strong enough plot to make it won­der­ful even if there were no songs to accom­pany it. “Rock of Ages” would quickly go into the “I don’t think I ever need to see that again” pile for me.

I am not entirely sure what audi­ence this movie is for. My first thought was the “tween” girls that are allowed to stay up late enough to catch “Glee” until I saw the bar­rage of sex­ual mate­r­ial on the screen. There are strip clubs, des­per­ate groupies and a whole lot of close-up tongue action packed into these two plus hours. Then I thought that it was made for the other end of the spec­trum, the forty-something guys that grew up rock­ing out to these tunes from Poi­son, Def Lep­pard and Guns N’ Roses. Though I don’t think they care much for the lyrics from their beloved melodies being turned into a love struck couple’s ban­ter. It is most likely for the folks that enjoy Broad­way musi­cals like “The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show” or “Movin’ Out.” This is not really the genre for me, but I can see where this clique would like it. As you may know, “Rock of Ages” is an adap­ta­tion of a musi­cal play.

Posted by Scott Hall on Jun 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.