Rock of Ages

Rated PG-13 for sexual content, suggestive dancing, some heavy drinking and language

 

Take a whole bag of 1980s rock and roll songs, stitch a woefully obvious if not thin plot around it, add some top shelf (mostly comic) actors shamelessly camping it up for the fun of it and add a revolting amount of arm pit hair shots and you have “Rock of Ages.” It was a stage musical and now it is a filmed musical. Often such treatment is a tragedy; it loses too much in the transition. I think, in the case of “Rock of Ages,” it skipped more than a few beats (pathetic pun brutally intended).

 Now, right off, let me deal with the elephant in the film. Tom Cruise, a pretty boy, is a dreadful actor and prone to eccentric thinking and behavior under the teachings of a certain hack SF writer. That should not matter here. For the first time, I may have found a reason to actually praise Mr. Cruise, an unnatural act that truly pains me. In this film, Mr. Cruise plays a burned out, whacko, self-absorbed, egocentric, morally and sexually vacuous rock star. And to my shock and awe, he sings. Perhaps with impressive post-production technical aids, but he carries a tune in a mighty shiny bucket. And his wacked-out primo uomo is (gulp) fascinating. In fact, the film comes alive only when he is on screen. And he is funny. He actually moves and acts the part. He gyrates about making his body look like the globs in a lava-lamp and that can only be accomplished after a lot of Scotch (or Jack Daniels) and long-term rubberization of spine and cartilage due to the proper mixture of the aforementioned booze and illegal chemicals — I imagine. I am not claiming (or thinking) Mr. Cruise did that — with booze and drugs — I’m just saying he is so good in this film that I am convinced that not only are his ridiculous tattoos real, but he can channel Mick Jagger, Ozzy Osbourne, Gene Simmons, and a whole coven of rock stars now fully, 100 percent dead.  

 Finally to the plot: In 1987, a young girl (played by I Don’t Remember) leaves Oklahoma for Los Angeles in order to become a Rock and Roll star. Upon arriving she has her suitcase stolen. A pretty-boy singer/bartender who also dreams of being a Rock and Roll star rescues her. (The actor who plays the young guy is I Don’t Remember Either.) He gets her a job in a joint called The Bourbon Room that is owned by Alec Baldwin wearing a wig so ridiculous that it would blind a blind man. Russell Brand plays his assistant and devoted sycophant. Of course, the two little wannabes fall in eye-rollingly innocent and montage-spinning love. Then, Stacee Jaxx, the rock star arrives and through a few, predictable, sitcom-like mishaps the “he” thinks that the love of his life (“she”) had a cheap fling with Jaxx and the love affair fizzles and he goes off to become a malicious torturer — or to be more specific — be in a boy band. I will go ahead and spoil it for you: boy meets girl, they fall in love, he bungles it, and comes crawling back: happy ending — everybody gets rich and famous and nobody dies of an overdose or finds themselves fat and pathetic selling their boxed set of CDs on public television.

Paul Giamatti, as usual, shines as an oily, scheming slime-ball agent. He played his role something like a devil buying souls and exploiting them using Rock and Roll.

 Naturally, there are bad guys in this film, but they are bad women: moralistic crusaders, political and religious — in Los Angeles, no less. In most scenes outside the club, church ladies wave signs decrying the moral decay caused by rock and roll, in 1987 mind you. What a yawn! Why does everybody want to be seen as a victim? What is with that? Even rock stars want to be seen as persecuted? Pull-eez. I thought that was the point.

I really did not hate “Rock of Ages.” I just think that if one is going to be lazy and not write original songs for a musical at least be clever with the plot. This one has all the depth and creativity of a tale told by a 9-year-old who watches way too many sitcoms on the Disney for Kids Channel while hopped up on candy and deprived of sleep for three days.

 There were some moments. But there were moments I prefer forgetting. Like the tongue-in-the-ear business; that was as unnecessary as the plethora of armpits and having to watch Tom Cruise French kissing with all the grace and style of a slobbering Labrador? Well, I’d just as soon read L. Ron Hubbard.

 Although I was impressed with Mr. Cruise’s satiric spin, I would have to say that this movie was clumsy and pedestrian; not enough entertainment and way too much hair and tongue — and did I mention the armpits?

 

“Rock of Ages” deserves no more than two and a half bow ties.