Rock of Ages

Rock of Ages (2012)

Directed by Adam Shankman (Hairspray). Starring Diego Boneta, Juilianne Hough-FutureWitham, Tom Cruise, Catherine Zeta-Jones-Douglas, Alec Baldwin and Russel Brand-FormerlyPerry.

Based on the Broadway Musical of the same name, Rock of Ages tells the story of Sherrie (Hough), the typical smalltown girl from Tulsa Oklahoma who follows her dreams of becoming a singer by travelling to Los Angeles. On the way she will find love in the name of Drew (Boneta), (well I use on the way losely, she is not even off the bus for half a song when he tries to save the day for her, quite poorly may I add), and face a few challenges on the way. The story focuses around the LA bar run by Baldwin, The Bourbon, which is on the verge of being shutdown by the wife (Zeta-Jones) of the local mayor who.

The storyline is terribly cliche' in a musical sense as I described above. Small town girl, wants to be a singer, falls in love, has her heart broken, hits rock bottom, then sings a few songs and all is good (cough cough Coyote Ugly). Even the other plotline (the closure of the bar) seems to be almost identical to that of Footloose. But however, I did not go to see this movie for the plot, I went for one thing, and one thing only, the music. I am a huge fan of 80's hair metal so from the starting medley of Paradise City/Sister Christian/Just Like Paradise/Nothin' but a Good Time to belting out Don't Stop Believin to end the movie, I was tapping and miming (I would have been singing if I wasn't in a busy cinema) along the entire time. I was worried going in that there would be very little hair metal, but i'd say there was more music and singing than there was actual movie.

As most of the movie was singing, it really took away from some of the things the movie lacked like character development and raw emotion. You didn't really feel any sympathy for the main two characters (Sherrie and Drew) as the performances from Hough and Boneta where fairly stale even though they tried their hardest. When Sherrie became a stripper for Madam Mary J. Blige, I was thinking at the time, this is probably a good move and when Drew decided to become Vanilla Ice (not literally but it was pretty obvious who the director was pointing the finger at, the middle one btw), I thought, well at least he would make money. By far the best performace of the night goes to Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx, lead singer of Arsenal, one of the biggest (fictional) rock bands of the time. He basically acts like Axl Rose the whole movie, which is awesome, and plays his character like the hair metal of the 80's, short, loud and fast. His rendition of my second favourite song of all time, Pour Some Sugar on Me, had me pumping my fist. Though I was tempted to give this award to Catherine Zeta-Jones' extremely awkward rendition of Hit me with your Best Shot, lucky it is a good song, because she dances around like your 80 year old Nan who had one too many wines at Christmas.

Like many reviewers will have given it, this is a mixed review. There were many things I enjoyed lihe the music (the mix-up of Heaven and More than Words was awesome) and the fact that it was extremely cliche', it is always good to see one of those movies every now and then. Then again there were a few things that left me scratching my head, like Alec Baldwin and Russel Brand making out (that lost the review a star, not that there is anything wrong with that, it just didn't feel right in the movie, it was just thrown in there for the sake of seeming politically correct) and the fact there was a character named Sherrie and they DIDN'T play more than 2 seconds of Oh Sherry by Journey is a huge shame. Overall I did enjoy watching this movie but it lacks something that occurs during the parts when the music is turned off like the good musicals have like Grease and The Wizard of Oz. I stress this again and again, I enjoyed this because of the music and if you aren't a huge fan of 1980's hair metal like myself, you may not enjoy this movie.

Overall: Still tapping my one foot along (I am injured at the moment so am on one leg) 2.5 Stars

Next Time: Snow White and The Huntsman (i.e. Thor chasing a blank piece of paper)