Rock Of Ages

Let’s be clear about something right up front: Rock of Ages, the new movie musical directed by Adam Shankman, isn’t even slightly rock and roll. It has some of the trappings. It’s set in the late eighties in and around a smoky Los Angeles dive called the Bourbon Room and stars Tom Cruise as a hard-drinking Axl Rose-ish rock superstar, but all of the grit and grime that accompanied that portion of rock history has been completely removed. The songs are covers, the lone sex scene is more of an energetic dry hump, and the fresh-faced young stars look like they would be afraid to try a cigarette, much less shoot themselves full of heroin. Rock and roll is dirty, filthy even, but Rock of Ages is the cinematic equivalent of a sanitary wipe.

Which shouldn’t suggest that there’s nothing here to enjoy. The songs, which come courtesy of bands like Foreigner, Pat Benatar, and Def Leppard, are at least hummable, even if they have been scrubbed clean of their imperfections and put into the mouths of baby cherubs. The story is a highly predictable yarn that follows small town girl Sherrie (Julianne “Future Mrs. Ryan Seacrest” Hough) as she chases her dreams to Hollywood where she meets city boy and would-be rocker Drew (Mexican pop star Diego Boneta). If you’ve ever seen a movie, or even heard about a movie, you know what happens next: the two fall in love, split up over a manufactured disagreement, and eventually get back together before signing off with a rousing rendition of Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believing’. But despite the cookie-cutter script, the movie occasionally summons enough wide-eyed innocence and sugar-rush energy to make you tap your toe, even though any buzz it generates dissipates mere seconds after the credits begin to roll.

The characters, like the movie itself, are mostly paper-thin, but the casting director has rounded up a pretty impressive roster of stars to play them. Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand have fun trading quips as the managers of the Bourbon Room, and an underused Catherine Zeta-Jones shows far more sex appeal than the alleged rockers as a neo-puritan crusading against the corrupting influence of rock music. R&B singer Mary J. Blige shows up as the owner of a strip joint and has a far bigger share of singing than her glorified cameo of a character deserves, but since she’s by far the best vocalist in the movie I didn’t really mind.

As the leads, Boneta and Hough are the weak links. Boneta can get into a good roll when belting out a number, but once the music stops he has all the charisma of an Executive Ken Doll. Hough confuses me. As a professional country singer, I’d expect her to at least have a decent set of pipes, but she has the flattest, most boring voice out of the entire cast. She should’ve been billed below the auto-tune machine in the credits. The one person who nearly escapes this pit of insubstantiality is Tom Cruise. As burned-out rock god Stacee Jaxx, Cruise oozes charisma in an effortless way that makes you remember why this guy was a movie star in the first place. I’d gladly watch a better movie focused on his character.

At a little over two hours in length, Rock of Ages is at least thirty minutes longer than it needs to be, with a solid chunk of it padded out by ancillary characters grabbing their moment in the spotlight. I’ve given the movie a lot of grief, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some fun watching it. Rock of Ages is enjoyable in the same way a can of Diet Coke can be enjoyable: it’s slight and weak and vastly inferior to the real thing, but it can tide you over until the real thing turns up. Once upon a time, musicals were among the most popular genres of movies produced, but that time is long gone and Rock of Ages isn’t going to bring it back. The pickings for fans of musicals such as myself are very, very slim, but I’ve got to get my fix somehow, right?