They say if you remember metal in the 80s, you didn’t live
through metal in 80s. With that, I think this can be safely assumed for those
responsible for “Rock of Ages”, a hair-metal mash-up-musical, adapted from a
popular Broadway production. Director
Adam Shankman, still reeling from the surprise success of his musical
adaptation of John Waters “Hairspray”, brings together a large all-star
cast, a lot enthusiasm and a big budget. What he gets from all of this is a
confused, underwhelming and expensive piece of Hollywood bad-idea backwash,
that’s at best silly and at worst boring.
It’s
1987 and Julianne Hough plays Sherrie, an Oklahoma girl who plans on moving to
LA to become a rock star like her favorite musical icons. Right off of the bus
ride she immediately gets a job at one of the hottest rock-clubs on the sunset
strip, where she meets Drew, who also wants make it big. The Bourbon Club is
run by Dennis and his longtime partner Lonny, played by Alec Baldwin and
Russell Brand. This club, loosely based on the famous Whisky a Go Go, will go
out of business unless they can book a performance from the erratic and
eccentric Stacy Jaxx (Tom Cruise). Making things even more complicated, Catharine Zeta Jones plays a metal-phobic
wife of a politician who plans to protest the club and do everything in her
power to shut it down in her attempts to clean up the strip.
The aim
of this movie is to strike a chord with a certain kind of fight-the-man appeal. Unfortunately, this just isn’t that movie. In fact I don’t what kind of movie this is or even
wanted to be. More importantly, I don’t know if the movie knows either. The
problem starts with the tone. We open on a bus where Julianne Hough is belting
out-loud Night Ranger’s Sister Christian, and we get the sense by her hopeful
crooning and the following romance between her and her would be rock and roll
boytoy that we are truly supposed to be emotionally involved with the moral
complexities and personal struggles of these characters. There also exists a
second layer of glittery camp and self-referential mockery--as represented by
Baldwin, Brand, and Cruise and their over the top portrayals--that seems to be
at odds with basic intentions of the plot. Does all of this keep us laughing?
Yes, and only half of the time the film in on the joke.
This
musical also struggles with who the audience is, and what they want to see.
There is a lot of racy raunch and hanky-panky to be had, suggesting that this
is something like a sex comedy of sorts. But the doe-eyed love story and
mournful turn at the end of second act keeps trying to tell us that it’s more
of an all-ages tale about the against-all-odds success of the underdog. At one
point Breaking Bad’s Brian Cranston, who plays the husband of Zeta Jones, is
being dominated by his mistress in a church while being cuffed and bound by a
catholic rosary. Now, I am not easily offended and I think that under the right
context all religion is ripe for parody or lampoon. This scene wasn’t well earned
and seemed to be particularly in-your-face for a movie that wasn’t cool or
anarchistic enough to make such a broad gesture.
Lastly,
you might be thinking "bad plots and shoddy performances can be excused in a
musical if the music is good". If there is anything that saves this mess it’s
the music—music that I have never been a fan of, I might add. The cheesy
hair-metal showcased here has a pop sensibility and anthemic quality that
sometimes manages to pull this baggy and saccharine script together. However,
if you were a fan of 80s metal this isn’t very rebellious, this isn’t badass, and
this isn’t really all that sexy. This is a Hollywood focus group’s idea of what
was happening in Motley Crue and Poison’s dressing rooms. Some might have
speculated from the initial marketing that this would be Glee for grown ups.
Unfortunately “Rock of Ages” is much more artificial and doesn’t even have a
television show’s sense of how to use its jukebox catalog in a meaningful or thematic
way. No, instead what we have here is more like “Guitar Hero: The Motion
Picture”.
Grade: D+
Originally published in The Basic Alternative/July-2012
No comments:
Post a Comment