Combining sets and visual effects, Rock Of Ages presents an impossibly glamorous Hollywood that’s more dreamlike and magnificent than the actual place.
The movie’s one consistent pleasure is production designer Jon Hutman’s cleverly gaudy re-imagining of the Sunset Strip. While not aspiring to high drama, Rock Of Ages does have a love story at its centre, but it’s hard to be too invested in the outcome – or in the characters’ earnest career ambitions – when the period details and bombastic songs get the higher priority. Obviously, the idea is to affectionately poke fun at a bygone period, but Shankman’s thimble-deep style – with its energetic choreography and fizzy tone – tends to reduce everything to the same level of irreverent glibness. ( Rock Of Ages is a film that hopes to get laughs from scenes of characters playing with a Rubik’s Cube or carting around an oversized cell phone.) While there’s much reverence around the rock songs – not to mention the notion of rock ‘n’ roll’s timeless importance – Rock Of Ages hedges its bets by simultaneously mocking the excesses of the late-’80s rock scene and the pop-culture artefacts of the era. Unfortunately, the movie sends mixed signals about its attitude toward its milieu. (The two notable exceptions, which occur in scenes incorporating Foreigner’s I Want To Know What Love Is and REO Speedwagon’s Can’t Fight This Feeling, upend expectations by twisting the words’ meaning.) (Tellingly, when filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson used the same song for Boogie Nights, its melodramatic, pseudo-epic qualities were being satirised.)īut for the most part, Rock Of Ages heartily embraces the dated, emotionally unsubtle material, playing up its big hooks and lyrical directness for maximum impact. For anyone familiar with the music, there’s an initial novelty in watching Sherrie and Drew express their innermost feelings through overheated radio staples like Night Ranger’s Sister Christian.
Love starts to blossom between these two, but their relationship gets sidetracked as the Bourbon Room prepares for a performance from Stacee Jaxx (Cruise), a cocksure, possibly demented rock star who’s about to embark on a solo career.īased on Chris D’Arienzo’s musical – he’s one of the film’s three credited screenwriters – Rock Of Ages doesn’t have an original score but, instead, has its characters sing mainstream rock hits of the era (including songs by Bon Jovi and Def Leppard). is Sherrie (Julianne Hough), an aspiring singer from Oklahoma who befriends one of the club’s employees, Drew (Diego Boneta), who is trying to launch a band of his own. Set in 1987 along L.A.’s infamous rock haven, the Sunset Strip, the film takes place largely at the Bourbon Room, a fading but legendary concert venue that still books rock bands, despite the influx of other musical styles into the culture. Probably catering more to a female audience, Rock Of Ages could do well amidst a sea of action films and family fare, but one should expect the soundtrack to appeal to aging head-bangers of both genders. Fans of musicals and ‘80s hard rock will no doubt be interested, and a starry cast that includes Tom Cruise (albeit in a supporting role) ought to increase awareness. Opening June 15, Rock Of Ages should strike a chord with several different demographics. Slightly recalling his turn as the misogynistic self-help guru in Magnolia, Cruise in Rock Of Ages alternates between being a dynamic, arresting singer on stage to revealing a more loathsome, spoiled persona off stage. Based on the popular, Tony-nominated production about a group of guys and gals living out their rock ‘n’ roll dreams, this lively but decidedly overlong film directed by Adam Shankman, who previously helmed 2007’s Hairspray, showers the audience with kitsch at the expense of characters. The jukebox musical Rock Of Ages all-too-accurately replicates the experience of listening to the 1980s arena rock and hair-metal that dominates the film’s soundtrack: In limited doses, it can be great cheesy fun, but prolonged exposure proves rather tiresome.
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