Rock of Ages Will Rock You... (Or At Least Lightly Jostle You)
Monday, June 18, 2012 at 9:00AM This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad
At a recent press screening in Manhattan, heavily attended by the gays, the choreographer turned So You Think You Can Dance judge turned movie director Adam Shankman cheerfully introduced the screening of his latest stage-to-screen musical Rock of Ages. It's his first musical since the exuberant Hairspray (2007) and he charmingly expressed his nerves and excitement about showing it off. He invited the assembled crowd to not take the movie too seriously, "dumb fun!", and sing along with it if they felt the urge. I was sitting near the front and as Shankman bounded up the stairs to exit from the back, he shouted out 'Oh, and I'm gay' as a "no shit" style punchline. The crowd laughed and the lights went out.
The energy of Shankman's introduction can't have hurt the screening but his invitation to sing-along proved redundant. It doesn't take long for the movie to send out its own karaoke invitation. In the jukebox movie musical's very first number we meet a small town girl, living in a lonely world, who takes a midnight train bus going anywhere. Her name is Sherry Christian (Julianne Hough) but she's not exactly going anywhere. She's purposefully headed to Los Angeles to try to make it in the music business. No sooner has she begun singing "Sister Christian" (get it? Um… haha?) than the unnamed extras on the bus start grabbing solo lines from the verses until the whole bus is singing about Sister Christian. Her time has come!
Upon her arrival in the big city, this girl from the sticks lands both a new job and a new bartender/songwriter boyfriend (Cam Gigandet) at a famous club operated by a beleaguered old pro (Cher) and her gayish sidekick (Stanley Tucci). The club is having financial trouble thanks in part to a mercenary money man (Eric Dane) and hopes that a big voice (Christina Aguilera) will resurrect its fortu--- NO, WAIT. THAT'S BURLESQUE! More after the jump...
My apologies. Given the identical plots I kept wishing I was watching Burlesque instead. Here's a chart in case I lost you...
Like Hairspray before it, Rock of Ages has a healthy sometimes wickedly funny sense of humor and dynamite choreography, but the comparisons (and most of the praise) end there. Hough and Boneta are attractive leads but you need star power and chemistry to headline and they're as exciting as cardboard multiplex advertisements once they're sharing their scenes with bonafide movie stars like Catherine Zeta -Jones and Tom Cruise.
Tom Cruise is so game for his role as a drugged up rock legend Stacee Jaxx that he enters the movie in assless chaps (his own idea according to Shankman). His star turn is both the worst thing and the best thing about the movie given that he's supremely watchable and only half costumed but also way too intense / emotionally broken for the "dumb fun" laughs the movie is going for. Malin Akerman is his romantic foil -- a Rolling Stone 'slutty librarian' type of reporter. Akerman is equally game but I kept wishing an actress with a more distinctive gift for goofy carnality and Cruise Chemistry would have played the role instead. Was Cameron Diaz too busy? Too tone deaf?
Catherine Zeta-Jones, who should only make musicals until she drops (by gunpoint if necessary) gets the cartoon energy right. She plays a pious activist with a secret who wants to shut down the sinful club. Sadly, Shankman doesn't seem to know what he's got in front of him in Zeta-Jones (used only fleetingly and not well at all after her secret comes out.)
Next time I go to church, Catherine Zeta Jones better be singing. PREACH!
Shankman is weirdly even more clueless about Mia Michaels' choreography though he's a choreographer himself. The numbers are so frenetically edited (even Zeta-Jones's Pat Benatar routine) that they make Moulin Rouge! feel absolutely restrained. And Moulin Rouge! had valid reasons for its chaos aesthetic! Shankman and his beleaguered editors (so. many. cuts) jerk so frequently from camera angle to camera angle and from one intense blurry close-ups of faces in motion to another that you'd think they were making a movie about rave culture rather than a movie about 80s hair metal power ballads. Where is the slow build, power reveal and repetitive totemic iconography of those classic dumb-fun songs in the visuals for this dumb-fun movie? The movie is such a chaotic mess that it's often more enjoyable to close your eyes and listen ….and Adam, baby, Adam. Listen, we have iTunes for that!
Hairspray 2: Welcome to the 80sTo be fair to Shankman, almost everyone making musicals these days needs two lessons, one in basic human anatomy, the other in filmmaking:
- Dancing takes place in the body, not in the face.
- The purpose of 24 frames per second is to simulate movement, not to show you 24 different pictures.
I have no idea whether audiences will respond to Rock of Ages but it's curio value may well play better at home where you can sing along or ignore at your leisure free from off key embarrassment. It's easy to imagine it being a huge hit at a karaoke themed thirty-to-fortysomething slumber party but who has those? If Rock of Ages would like to become a smash hit I suggest sending Adam Shankman on tour with it to introduce each and every screening. That'd be a grueling tour for any director with a movie on 3,470 plus screens several times a day but if anyone has the inexhaustible energy for it it might well be Shankman.
Grade: I'll settle for a C. B enjoyable with unfortunate D filmmaking.
Oscar Chances: They're not gonna take it. NO. They're not gonna take it. They're not gonna take it Anymooooorrrre ♪
Reader Comments (8)
Maybe some Golden Globe noms...
They like Burlesque after all :)
Just for clarification, Adam Shankman only directed the movie. He did not do the choreography. In the opening credits, his SYTYCD colleague Mia Michaels is credited with choreography.
I have never been a fan of Tom Cruise, but I thought he saved this film from total debacle. Somehow I can see him nabbing a Golden Globe Best Supporting Actor nomination.
I haven't watched the movie, but based on the reactions I read, I thought maybe Tom Cruise at the Globes if he's a lead? He probably wouldn't get in for supporting..
I'm going to say right now that Cruise wins the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy/Musical. He was playing in an entirely different league than everyone else in the cast. You can't trap a fire phoenix!
this is like the tenth "weirdly" you've used today. tone it down, dude.
What about CZJ's performance? Maybe be Globes nomination?
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