Good grief. What to say about this near-traincrash?
I’ll just list a few things, for I really cannot bring myself to writing a coherent review about, well, this.
1) Adam Shankman made an entertaining and smart musical. But that is called Hairspray (2007) and not Rock of Ages.
2) The late 1980s are not a period you wane be reminded of. Ever.
3) Seeing Catherina Zeta-Jones hump church benches in a “rock” song against rock and sex is a bit weird.
4) Stop casting your leads from the Disney channel! These people are homogeneous bore-yawn-faces.
5) The leads (Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta) are actually not cast from the Disney channel. But they could have been.
6) Having been processed by the digital mainstreamenizer every single song in this film sounds the sugary-same.
7) And, you know, it’s not like Don’t Stop Believin’, We Built This City and More Than Words were very rough, rock songs unsuitable for a conventional musical in the first place. It’s not Rage Against the Machines…
8) For a good appropriation of songs in the context of a new film see Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrmann, 2001).
9) I do not dislike musicals.
10) But this one is shit.
11) It’s like a list of sometimes-slightly-connected things and songs just “happening”.
12) You’d think that Alec Baldwin as an aged rocker would be funnier.
13) You’d hope that Russell Brand as a slightly-less-aged rocker would be dirtier and nastier.
14) You’d fear that Catherina Zeta Jones as Sarah Palinesque Born Again Christian would be sexier.
15) Why is this film set in LA but shot in Miami? These cities do not even look the same.
16) Good God… Paul Giamatti’s hair.
17) Malin Akerman’s hair.
18) Everyone’s hair, for that matter.
19) Except that of the leads, who of course look perfectly 2010s.
20) Saving grace: Tom Cruise, giving it his best as a completely deranged over-the-hill rock legend. Awesome.
PS NOW I HAVE JOURNEY PLAYING ON REPEAT IN MY HEAD SINCE WEDNESDAY BECAUSE OF THIS NIGHTMARE
