Ok, Here's Why it Sucked...

For a change of pace, how about a movie review.

I just went to see “Rock of Ages”, and it was predictably not-great. The movie itself is so slipshod it’s not really worth a review, however the nature of the cinematic missteps do bear consideration. Let’s start at the beginning.

I was actually extremely hopeful at the beginning when the distribution logo opened with Guns and Roses. Any movie set in this area of American pop-culture history MUST open with Guns and Roses, so the filmmakers definitely got this point right. They score more points for their song choice: Paradise City. There simply is no song of the hair-metal era that so perfectly captures the fantasy, the promise, and the harsh reality of L.A. strip circa 1984 like “Paradise City”. The familiar drumbeat captured the crowd immediately, and heads were nodding in reverent unison...for all of 15seconds. Then, the rock glory is inexplicably faded out in favor of a close up Julianna Hough. Julianna’s character, Sherry, is the prototypical small town farm girl headed to wonderful L.A. in the hopes of making it big or at least getting a good case of the herp from a roady or two. As she rides in contemplation on her bus-like chariot toward destiny, she mentally regards her grandmother’s well wishes and croons out the opening line of “Sister Christian”. The bus driver takes the bait, a little girl shows her potential, and soon the whole bus is rapt in the strains; and so is the audience...for all of 10seconds. Then, Sister Christian inexplicably fades out in favor of another useless character intro. And, so the movie goes on and on this way.

They kept teasing us with our memories of glamorous rock’n roll decadence only to fade it out, chop it up, mash it together, and ultimately pussify it until we literally lost interest in listening. It’s like the filmmakers were relying on our nostalgia of the music to sustain us without them having to actually perform any of it with any sort of authenticity. If you’re looking to relive or rehear any of the classics, this ain’t your flick, which is very unfortunate since the movie offers you zero value anywhere else.

Julianna Hough is an excellent dancer, a better than average vocalist, but a lousy actress. She’s one of the worst actresses ever put on screen. Her presence invariably sucks all the genuine emotion out of any scene she’s in from the moment she’s introduced. No matter the situation, you just don't believe her performance. Her lack of talent in this area becomes even more apparent when Malin Akermin's hammy portrayal of Constance Sack explodes with chemistry against Tom Cruise' Stacy Jaxx. The juxtaposition between the two actresses performance is startling. It’s not Hough's fault really. She’s used to playing to a live crowd. The lack of feedback from an audience neutered her emotions, and it shows in EVERY scene. The rest of the cast did not fare any better. The lead actor is too busy trying to actually connect with Hough to pay attention to his less than stellar stage presence and non-existent character development. Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin are obviously in this for the lulz and are way too busy entertaining themselves to be bothered to salvage the floundering new comers. The truly excellent Paul Giamatti just can’t bear to phone it in and works double-time as both a secondary antagonist and long suffering straight-man to Tom Cruise in an effort to save this thing. His efforts to bolster the plot do not go unnoticed or unappreciated, but it’s a lost cause as the movie has no real plot. The main “love” story takes place over the course of a week. That’s one week, movie-time. So, you have to believe that these two people meet, fall genuinely madly in love and break-up in five days even though one of them is a barback on the L.A. Strip during the mid‘80s. A barback on the L.A. Strip in the mid‘80‘s would have been swimming in discarded groupy ass every night. The idea that he would see this girl from Oklahoma and just fall for her instantly is just preposterous. This lack of suspension-of-disbelief is complicated by the utter lack of chemistry between the two leads. It’s basically just a long running badly paced music video set around the chorus of an ancient rock ballad that everyone has heard but no one really liked. Think Air Supply.

Then there’s the performances. They are bad. Everyone tries there had at being a rock-god at one point or another with the exception of Paul G., but they all sound like bad backup singers. The problem here is the filmmaker kept wanting to showcase the lyrics when these were never about the lyrics. These songs are about the ROCK! The driving drumlines, the guitar riffs you can’t forget, and the singer that screams out sounds rather than words. Mary J. Blige does her lever best to bolster the noise halfway through, but she’s ill-used. Her character has no development, no purpose, and maybe 10 lines of dialogue, yet she appears in every song in the movie after her introduction with no effort made to justify her presence. It feels disingenuous, transparent, and disrespectful to her talents. Catherine Zeta Jones suffers a similar fate. She’s a vet of the musical-to-movie biz and knows what she’s doing but is never given a chance to strut. She is allowed to dance somewhat but isn’t allowed to take the center and claim the stage and this is huge detriment to the film. They just never give her anything to do. Her antagonism never generates any real drama, so she's left singing and dancing in a vacuum. The audience caught on to this quickly and lost interest. Think how it would feel to go to nightclub excited to see Velma Kelley only to be stuck with Roxy Hart. Yep, that bad.

When it comes down to it, these songs are the music of the Rock-Gods. They should grab you by the throat and other places and make you stand-up in reverence. They are sexual power incarnate and mortals aren’t able to resist, but you have to follow certain rules. Here is a short incomplete list of them that are relevant to this movie: If your main character is named Sherrie play “Oh, Sherrie” at some point, If you have well known rockers from the era together to perform a song DON’T make that song “We Built This City”, In fact if you collect vintage rockers for a song for a movie titled “Rock of Ages, they should sing ROCK OF FUCKING AGES, In that collection of rocker royalty DON’T include Debbie Gibson (WTF?), and finally, as a test, play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” to close the show and if the audience isn’t on its feet and fist-pumping (they weren’t) you have failed.

In the future, all makers of rock-musical movies need to first start by watching “Purple Rain” let’s say...two-dozen times or so. By the end of that you should have a good idea of how it’s done.