Runtime: 2 hours, 3 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Directors: Adam Shankman
Quick Impressions:
My husband and I kept going back and forth, trying to decide if we wanted to see Rock of Ages or Safety Not Guaranteed. We’d heard both that Rock of Ages was awesome and that it was dumb. (And, in fact, it’s both awesome and dumb.) Safety Not Guaranteed had similarly mixed word of mouth. In the end “awesome”/ “dumb” won out over “best movie this year”/ “pretentious pile of excrement”/ “delightful romp through the whimsies of schizophrenia.”
Last night, we picked Rock of Ages.
The movie should be called Some People Can Act and approached Where’s Waldo style. Can you pick out the people with talent from the otherwise lackluster mob?
Actually, most of the credited cast has quite a bit of talent and charisma. Unfortunately, these people turn up mainly in the margins of the story—a quick song here, a brief scene there, a suggestive eye roll, a manic dance move. Then back to the dull couple hogging center stage.
The biggest problem with Rock of Ages can be summed up in two words—Julianne Hough.
After the movie, my husband said, “Who is that actress I’m thinking of? All I could think during the movie was that this would have been so much better if she had played Sherrie.”
I said, “You’re right. I agree completely.”
He said, “You know the actress I mean?”
Nope. I had no idea which actress he was thinking of as an alternative, but I am still positive that she would have been better than Julianne Hough.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure Julianne Hough is a nice person (and she looks like the type who would cry if she read the previous paragraph. So if you are Julianne Hough, know that you’re very pretty, and that I’m the one person on earth who would have been worse as Sherrie, and that you looked just like the cool teenager who played rad Debbie Gibson songs on her boombox the whole time she babysat me back in Oklahoma in 1987.)
Julianne Hough looked the part, and that’s part of the problem. The part was dumb. The character had no depth or characteristics that made her standout. She was playing ’80s Amalgam Barbie. The script didn’t give her much to work with, and the director must have been satisfied with her performance as it was. That’s not her fault. Of course, a more seasoned actress could have brought some pizzazz to an underwritten role. Hough has iffy stage presence, little charisma, and a singing voice that really annoyed me.
The whole time my husband was trying to remember Amanda Seyfried’s name, I was sitting there fighting down the urge to punch Julianne Hough in the face if she didn’t stop singing like that. Adam Shankman is at fault. He should have a) given Hough better direction or b) found someone more suited to the role—which would have been anyone. I would have taken John Travolta in a wig again!
And Diego Boneta isn’t much better.
Oh, no wait. He is, actually. Diego Boneta is much, much better. He has way more charisma. True, he’s (bafflingly) at his most masculine when he’s in a boy band, but he has very pretty eyes (that look great enhanced with lots of make-up for rock performances), and he has a much stronger voice than Hough. I actually found him quite appealing (to my surprise). He made another bland, weak protagonist a bit more palatable—something Hough just didn’t have the charisma or the experience to manage. (Don’t cry, Julianne. I couldn’t have managed it, either.)
As we drove home, I said to my husband, “Catherine Zeta-Jones was pretty consistently over-the-top, but that’s so much better than being under the bottom.” I won’t say who was under the bottom because I’ve been too cruel already. (Don’t cry, Julianne. In my first play, I knocked down the set and fell off the stage.)
Anyway, enough of this anti-Hough huff! On to what was good…
The Good:
The movie was actually pretty solid and entertaining throughout—unless you count the first forty-five minutes or so. That was boring. But once Stacee Jaxx shows up, the movie dramatically improves.
Without a doubt, the best part of Rock of Ages is the soundtrack. We saw the movie in Cinemark XD, and as we went in, we wondered at the wisdom of putting Rock of Ages on the XD screen. But it was absolutely the right choice. Crowds may not be coming in droves to see this movie, but those who do see it deserve a big screen and fantastic sound. The music is great and almost makes up for a somewhat lacking plot and disappointingly lackluster main characters. If you like 80’s rock, then this is the movie for you. We’ll probably buy the soundtrack. (I’m also curious about the Broadway original cast recording.)
(Just now I took a break to take my daughter for a walk in the park. On the walk back, I caught myself singing, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” in my head and thought, Well Julianne Hough must not have been so terrible, after all, if her song is stuck in my head. But then I remembered that was the song Catherine Zeta-Jones sang.)
The supporting characters in the movie are universally fantastic. (That seems like awfully high praise for a mediocre movie, but when once you get swept up in the 80’s rock spirit and Rock of Ages finally gets going, you do tend to think in superlatives. It’s hard to help that.)
As Bourbon Room owners, Dennis and Lonny, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are probably the best characters in the whole movie. I’ve always thought that when casting a musical, it’s better to have actors who can’t sing than singers who can’t act. Alec Baldwin has arguably the weakest singing voice in the cast, but his stage presence, charisma, and acting ability more than make up for that. Who cares if he can sing? When he’s on stage, we want to watch him, which is more than can be said for the two leads. Russell Brand has limited range as an actor, but he’s certainly realistic as somebody who walks out on stage and tries to stir up or settle down a crowd.
I’ve never seen the Broadway show, but I think that the movie suffers by making the young lovers the protagonists. Why not focus on Dennis and Lonny? The fate of the Bourbon Room seems to be at the center of the story. I think the movie would have made more sense with Baldwin and Brand’s characters as protagonists and the ingénue and her wannabe-rock-star Romeo shuffled off into a side plot. (Putting the ingénues in the side plot and the club owner in the spotlight is certainly not unheard of. It works beautifully in Casablanca.) Baldwin and Brand have much better chemistry together and more charisma individually than Hough and Boneta. Their duet is one of the highlights of the movie, and neither of them has the world’s best singing voice. (Brand is not too bad, though. His voice just isn’t very strong.)
I’ve heard that Mayor Mike Whitmore and his wife Patricia (played by Bryan Cranston and Catherine Zeta-Jones) were added for the movie (presumably to create a role for Catherine Zeta-Jones). I wish they’d been given a bit more to do. I thought they were an intriguing pair, particularly because they seem like they’d be a perfect fit sexually if they were just more honest with each other about their desires. Bryan Cranston seems to show up lurking around in the background of every movie that comes out lately, and that’s perfectly fine with me. He’s quite engaging here, though he hardly gets any screentime.
Zeta-Jones, meanwhile, is chewing scenery and dancing people to death like some one-woman Broadway stampede. She is absolutely over-the-top insane every time she’s on the screen, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. This is a musical. Some sign of energy (not to mention skill) while dancing and singing is definitely welcome, and Jones really performs her heart out. I’m not sure exactly what kind of accent she was going for, though. Her line delivery seems a little strange, and her character is (obviously deliberately) bizarre—brimming over with very thinly concealed conflicted lust and hatred for Stacee Jaxx. The character could probably have used a bit more development, but Zeta-Jones certainly makes the most of what she’s given. She’s unquestionably talented, and though her energies sometimes seem misplaced (in what may be some kind of meta commentary on the nature of such characters), I’ll say this for her—She’s never boring. The first thirty minutes of the film probably would have been more entertaining (if less coherent) if they featured exclusively Patricia Whitmore dancing around like an escaped mental patient. Too much? Maybe. But in a musical, too much beats not enough every time.
Mary J. Blige really can sing. Paul Giamatti really can act. So they were both welcome additions to the cast. Giamatti plays a sleaze ball particularly well, and he was sinisterly charming as Jaxx’s somewhat odious agent, Paul Gill (a character who was unfairly vilified in my opinion. The way he treated Dennis Dupree wasn’t exactly commendable, but somebody’s got to pay for the baboon and his presumably custom made monkey suits. I’m not convinced that Gill was quite as dastardly and dishonest as everybody believed. Someone who tells you, “In order to make a living, you must deliver a product that is commercially viable” isn’t being dishonest. He’s being honest. That’s the truth. It just sucks. Drew Boley acts like Gill twirled his mustache and destroyed his dreams. But in reality, Drew’s dreams were unrealistic and ill-defined.) Anyway, Giamatti is well cast.
I found Mary J. Blige’s character the most fascinating in the movie. Is she an angel of mercy or an alpha predator? I never did quite make up my mind.
Now to appreciate what I’m about to write next, you must know that I have never liked Tom Cruise (as an actor). For years, I tried really hard. In the 90’s, he always seemed like such a nice person, running around saving people on yachts and stuff. And so many people loved him. I tried, I really did. I went to all kinds of terrible movies I hated trying to warm up to him. Then for a while, I actively hated him (in an almost obsessive way, sort of like Patricia Whitmore but without the sexual overtones). But then everybody started hating him, so hating him seemed really mean. Then I started to pity him. Then I finally got the good sense to avoid his work since I never like it.
Okay, that said, Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx is definitely the best part of Rock of Ages. When I thought back over the scenes that worked, almost all of them featured Cruise. I still think he has limited range as an actor (though he clearly wants to push himself and be seen as an artist). I mean, he’s so dark and creepy as Stacee Jaxx, but it still feels like Tom Cruise acting dark and creepy. In a way, though, that’s almost better. Just by being Tom Cruise, he brings a lot with him to the role, gives us a lot to mull over in the back of our minds as we watch what’s unfolding on screen. At several points, I realized, “A poor, emotionally disturbed, miserable, starving artist who somehow makes it big becomes a rich, emotionally disturbed, miserable, successful artist.” I think people often make the mistake of thinking that Hollywood or the music industry or whatever destroys an artist when, in fact, many artists are intrinsically emotionally unstable individuals (though I’m certainly not implying that the entertainment industry is wholesome and healthy).
And Malin Akerman is absolutely perfect as Constance Sack. Watching her dressing down and getting dressed down by Stacee Jaxx, I thought, She has everything that Julianne Hough is missing. I don’t mean physically. They’re both very attractive, but Akerman has much more energy and brings a sense of humor to the role that really improves the movie.
Most Honest Character:
Mary J. Blige’s Justice Charlier may run a club with questionable morals, but she is so right when she keeps telling Sherrie to go back to Oklahoma. Telling her that she’s actually looking for love not fame sounds like a polite way of saying that she doesn’t have the talent to make it in Hollywood. In fact, judging by what I saw, she doesn’t have the talent to make it as a pole dancer, either.
Charlier tells Sherrie early on that not just everybody can make it as a dancer in her club. No kidding! I think they send the ones who aren’t good enough to do something less ambitious like star in Cirque du Soleil.
Funniest Scene:
I love the first face-to-face conversation Tom Cruise has with Alec Baldwin. They’re both fantastic in that scene. Also, the guy who answers the phone at Rolling Stone has a pretty funny bit. Sherrie and Drew’s brief contest about which has the worst life is funny but kind of predictable—I mean, it feels recycled or something. It’s also kind of funny that Drew never actually sings “Oh Sherrie.” Oh yeah! And Will Forte has a really great moment when he’s reacting to what Catherine Zeta-Jones is saying. He doesn’t really say anything, but the expression on his face is so amusing.
Visually:
No one scene really stood out to me, though the montage of Drew and Sherry skating and running along the beach made me want to go to California (even though I know this was filmed in Florida). The most stunning thing I saw visually was the preview for The Great Gatsby that played before the movie.
But I did notice several people’s eyes. It happened over and over again. I’d think, “Wow, Tom Cruise does have lovely hazel eyes,” and then a few minutes later, it would be somebody else’s eyes. I do have a particular affinity for eyes, but I’m pretty sure either Adam Shankman or the cinematographer does, too. We see so many lit so beautifully.
Also what is the obsession with French kissing? A boring scene between Sherrie and Drew behind the Hollywood sign starts to seem somewhat weird as we get a long look into their mouths. I mean, we see glowing teeth and lots of tongue. First it just seems weird. Later, it seems like deliberate foreshadowing of a certain moment shared by Malin Akerman and Tom Cruise, surely one of the most unusual kisses in film history.
Funniest Song:
Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand sing a fantastic duet of REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling.” It helps that I’ve always liked the song, but their performance of it is so entertaining and amusing. It’s played for laughs, and all too brief, but it’s still a lot more engaging than anything Drew and Sherrie sing together.
Best Song:
I liked the Stacee Jaxx performance of Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” but this is bound to be subjective. My husband really loves the song “Jukebox Hero,” so he liked that part. Really, almost all of the songs are good (or are bad on an entirely subjective basis). (I’ve never liked “More Than Words,” for example, and don’t like Hough’s style of singing, but surely some people will.)
Best Scene:
First my favorite part in the movie was the post-interview encounter between Malin Akerman and Tom Cruise. It was just so over-the-top bizarre. But by the end of the film, that moment was eclipsed by the wonderful scene when Cruise comes looking for Akerman in the Bourbon Room. I just loved the way they interacted as he tried to make his way across the crowded room but kept getting interrupted by unusual delays.
Akerman and Cruise were the best part of the movie, but they couldn’t really have taken up much more screen time. They wouldn’t have worked as the leads (unfortunately, because they were so entertaining).
The Negatives:
I’ve probably been too hard on Julianne Hough. It’s really not her fault she’s terrible in the movie. She didn’t cast herself. Plus, the real problem is that the movie isn’t written well. The beginning is so slow, and it’s initially unclear what the shape of the story will be. We know that Stacee Jaxx is coming. Will the story extend beyond that? Once he finally performs is that going to be the end? The story seems so ill-defined up to that point that we’re really not sure what to expect (except that we’re probably going to hear the rest of the song “Don’t Stop Believing” at some point near the end).
Fortunately, the movie actually begins when Cruise arrives on the scene. But the last time I checked, a movie is not supposed to begin 30-45 minutes after the opening credits. That kind of pacing tends to make people walk out of the theater, bored to tears and despairing that anything meaningful will ever happen.
Drew and Sherrie are Every(80’s wo/)man characters, and I really wish their love story had been sidelined because nothing really happened during or because of it. When they finally have a fight, the whole thing seems so dumb. Honestly, the movie would have been better if Sherrie had slept with Stacee Jaxx. Why wouldn’t she? And why would Drew have been so upset? Given how obsessed with Stacee Jax both of them were, I think it would have made more sense if he’d reacted by going in and having sex with Stacee Jaxx himself. Ordinarily, I’m not a fan of infidelity, but given the culture of the film, I don’t think sleeping with Stacee Jaxx would have been an out-of-character move for Sherrie or even a particularly shocking one. All of the women in the club want to sleep with Stacee Jaxx. They all faint at the mere mention of his name. Sherrie and Drew are both hard-core rock fanatics obsessed with rock music and culture. The conflict between Sherrie and Drew is beyond contrived. It’s really just annoying.
But the second half of the movie is pretty consistently entertaining and engaging (though the threat posed by Catherine Zeta-Jones just sort of fizzles in a not-very-effective way).
I’m not sure what audience this movie has in mind, though. Why not just go for an R and make the tone (which is already darkly comic) just a little darker? This isn’t a sweet story like Hairspray that the whole family will enjoy. This is basically a movie targeted at people who fondly remember the 80s. Go for the R. You’re not doing yourself any favors with the PG-13. Satisfy your core audience instead of reaching to appeal to a demographic that isn’t interested.
Overall:
Basically, the screenplay was bad, but the music was phenomenal. If you like 80’s music, you’ll probably enjoy Rock of Ages, and it may be worth seeing in the theater for the sake of the sound. The energetic, often zany supporting cast makes the movie a lot of fun once it gets going. I didn’t like this as much as Hairspray, but it was about a million times better than Battleship, so its quality is all a matter of perspective.