Based upon the stage show by Chris D'Arienzo
Screenplay Written by Justin Theroux and Chris D'Arienzo and Allan Loeb
Directed by Adam Shankman
* (one star)
If rock and roll isn't dead, then this movie will surely kill it off for certain.
Director Adam Shankman has just dropped a cinematic bomb of mammoth proportions as "Rock Of Ages," his adaptation of the successful off-Broadway "jukebox musical," is, without question, one of 2012's very worst films. It is a brain dead, heart empty, plastic, shrill, over-long and soulless experience that will do nothing to elevate you and your love of rock and roll music but will conversely cause either one or all of the three following results: to make you feel guilty for ever being passionate about rock and roll in the first place, LOUDLY listen to some REAL rock and roll music to cleanse yourself from the stench left behind by this movie or just sit in utter and stunned silence. This is the kind of movie where your palm repeatedly rises to harshly smack your own forehead in shattered disbelief and believe me, my palm is more than a bit sore as scene after scene was more chaotic than the one before as the entire film built to a conclusion that was most predictable and ear shatteringly stupid. "Rock Of Ages" is a movie made up of three brain cells and they fought among themselves violently for the entire duration. If you have already seen this movie, I share your pain. If you have not, consider yourself warned.
For a movie that boats not one, not two, but three Screenwriters yet absolutely none of them cared about anything in regards to characters, plot or storytelling, I will try to make my plot description mercifully brief. For if they did not want to waste time with such elements then why should I? "Rock Of Ages" is set during 1987 and opens on the lovely, fresh faced Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) as she makes her bus ride from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Los Angeles, California with big dreams and Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" plus other songs from the hair metal era in her heart. Mere moments after stepping off from the bus, Sherrie's luggage is stolen and she is rescued by Drew Boley (Diego Boneta) an aspiring rock musician/singer and bartender at the legendary but financially ailing (yet always packed to the gills) Sunset Strip club The Bourbon Room, owned and operated by Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin) and Lonny Barnett (Russell Brand). Stacee takes a job as a waitress and she and Drew soon fall in love and support each other's musical dreams for fame and fortune.
Hoping to clear their large debts, Dennis and Lonny book the final gig of the band Arsenal featuring the lead vocals and guitar heroics of the perpetually wasted rock star Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise), a move which entices the rage of Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the religiously pious wife of Los Angeles Mayor Mike Whitmore (Bryan Cranston), to have the club shut down once and for all. And throughout, the love story of Sherrie and Drew plays on and on as misunderstandings, break-ups and (almost) broken dreams) threaten to keep them apart. But will true love and rock and roll save the day?
Dear readers, I have to inform you that I have absolutely nothing against the movie musical. Not one bit. In fact, some of my favorite movies and movie going experiences have all been musicals, and the rock musical in particular. Films like Director Ken Russell's "Tommy" (1975) and Director Milos Forman's "Hair" (1979) for instance, rank as two of the finest films I have ever seen. And I will forever carry the torch for the Director Michael Schultz's universally maligned Beatles inspired fairy tale musical fantasy "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1978), a film I was deeply obsessed with as a child and could never understand why no one in the world liked it other than myself.
That said, I am not one for forced merriment. It is something that I have always tended to carry a natural resistance towards. If I am ever caught up within any story of any sort that is essentially blaring into my face that WE'RE ALL JUST GONNA GET UP AND HAVE A GOOD TIME, I am more than ready to seek out an escape hatch because if I cannot be swept away naturally then I just want nothing to do with it at all. "Rock Of Ages" is indeed one of those movies that is nothing more than forced merriment as it works itself into a completely inorganic frenzy fueled by the songs that graced and/or littered our radio airwaves for a spell. Adam Shankman is like the Michael Bay of musicals and comedies as he is a director without a shred of subtlety, nuance or even good taste as he just bludgeons you with sight and sound, trying to make you feel entertained by sheer force of will and without any understanding with how and why the very best musicals work successfully at all. Catherine Zeta-Jones, for instance, and so wonderful in Director Rob Marshall's "Chicago" (2002), performs to near spontaneous combustion in one dance sequence that never felt authentic, exhilarating or even as ferociously funny as Shankman obviously thought it was. It felt like a wrestling match and not in a remotely good way.
So, why does a film like Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!" (2001), a film that no one could describe as "subtle," work so thrillingly while "Rock Of Ages" fails? Well, just think back to "Moulin Rouge!" and the emotional wallop it packed. For all of its' flash, style and barrage of sounds and imagery, there was not a dry eye in the house once it concluded and you knew that Luhrmann was a filmmaker who truly had an intense methodology to his cinematic madness where every moment had meaning and served to tell his story. The very best musicals are sumptuous dream worlds where life itself is a song and you are so lost inside of the music that you can not help yourself but to express yourself through song, dance or any sense of musical performance. The very best movie musicals are the ones that present the act of being swept away, where music becomes emotion. The very best movie musicals can transport us into a place of sheer emotion, either of fanciful flight or crippling despair. Yet all "Rock Of Ages" accomplishes is the desire to plug your ears and never ever desire to hear a sung note again. The film is just one thousand neon signs in your face telling you how to feel at every conceivable moment that there's no room to breathe. And without any real characters or any real story to latch onto, all you have are the songs themselves and let's face it, those tracks by the likes of Poison and Whitesnake sucked back in 1987 and they are no better now.
"Rock Of Ages" is also a strangely conceived piece. While it proudly claims to be set within the year of 1987, it is a film that creates what is essentially a fun house mirror version of 1987, where all of the pop cultural touchstones of the decade seem to exist all at the same time. Additionally, "Rock Of Ages" suffers the same fate that plagued Director Julie Taymor's ambitious but sluggish and wildly uneven Beatles pastiche "Across The Universe" (2007). Where that film tried to present a very real world 1960's but it was a 1960's where The Beatles seemed to never exist, "Rock Of Ages" gives us a 1987 where the bands that made these songs famous (or infamous) also seemed to have never existed and we are to believe that the bland and barely drawn character of Drew is the composer of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'."
Beyond that, and also like "Across The Universe,' Shankman has crammed so many songs from the era into the film regardless if they make any narrative sense whatsoever that the experience feels more like "Name That Tune" than a musical as several songs are just smashed together as ADD medleys. Remember, this film boats three Screenwriters, yet the dialogue is reduced to its most painfully basic, insipid and perfunctory that its only purpose is to get the audience to the next song that has been shoehorned into the plot which introduces, drops and monkey wrenches back into the film characters and story threads without rhyme or reason (a ballad between Baldwin and Brand set to REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling" was an especially WTF?! moment). And for a musical, it was amazing to see (or hear, as the case may be) so much singing that felt to be so canned to the point that it all felt to be hermetically sealed in a cavernous studio rather than singing that felt to be lived and expressed to the heavens. Julianne Hough suffers the most as she represents the type of singing that is much to prevalent these days, as her chirpy, helium voice sounds studio processed within an inch of its life that I was unsure if I was hearing her voice at all.
Even worse, Shankman makes a cardinal sin of a cinematic error with his music choices as Extreme's top charting ballad "More Than Words" plays a crucial role in the love story of Drew and Sherrie but unfortunately, that song did not even exist in 1987, as it really entered the world and music charts in ...1990!!!! If you can't even get those sorts of details correct, then you are definitely not the one meant to make a movie like this.
So, why even give this movie even one star, you ask? I am able to easily explain that reasoning in two short words: Tom. Cruise. Yes, dear readers, as the long in the tooth, washed up and booze stenched Stacee Jaxx, Tom Cruise appears in "Rock Of Ages" as if he is acting in a completely different movie, one that is actually populated with real characters and a real story. Cruise, in his few scenes in the film, injects some real danger and a sharp satirical edge to the proceedings as he stalks the screen in his inebriated, lopsided prowl and speaks in a voice that sounds as if it is emerging from deep inside the bottom of a bottle. And once it is his time to sing and perform his rock God moves, Cruise succeeds wonderfully. He is easily and far and away the very best thing in this miserable movie and I had only wished that there was a movie equal to what he delivered.
However, even the greatness provided by Tom Cruise is nowhere near enough to even recommend this film as a curiosity or a potential guilty pleasure. Yes, it is that bad. Yes, it is that unwatchable. But hey, if sitting through this two hour and change mess of a movie with its poorly conceived...everything...plus the prospect of finally, at long last, hearing Paul Giamatti and Alec Baldwin sing piques your interest, then this movie is for you.
But as I said earlier, you have been warned.
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