Whether or not you enjoyed the stage version of "Rock of Ages" and whether or not you'll enjoy a filmed version of it depends largely, I think, on whether or not you find D'Arienzo's comment about his show as an olive branch to be a silly notion or poetry. And I don't think you'd find any poetry in it unless you lived it.
I lived it. I racked up countless hours of tech rehearsals as a member of the stage crew at my high school while rocking my acid-washed jeans. And while by then I had moved on a bit to R&B, I never forgot where I came from. And white kids from my neighborhood only liked R&B at all because Aerosmith and rock producer Rick Rubin introduced us to rap via RUN-DMC and Beastie Boys. Eddie Van Halen did the guitar solo on "Beat It." I loved that stuff, but as my love for music was in its most fertile bloom, as I was developing the habit of needing to hear music every day of my life, the cassette tapes said "Girls, Girls, Girls," "Look What the Cat Dragged In" and "Pride." Somewhere trapped in that awkward body was the same kind of kid dreaming of being a hair metal rock star that features prominently into the "Rock of Ages" story.
But this is not about me; it's about "Rock of Ages." And though I bring so much nostalgia to the table and came so pre-loaded to love the movie, I also try to be honest about what I see. So in the spirit of that honesty, let me say two things about "Rock of Ages":
1. "Rock of Ages" is a spectacularly average movie, veering wildly from moments of inspired genius to the kind of bad that elicits laughter from its audience - and not the good kind.
2. Tom Cruise makes "Rock of Ages," no matter how inconsistent or mediocre, worth seeing. I'll go one better. He deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. I will be furious if he doesn't get one. And the only reason why I'm not telling you he should WIN the Oscar is because it's only June. This is easily one of the most inspired performances of his career.
D'Arienzo admits that he wrote "Rock of Ages" to be patterned after some specific Broadway musical cliches, and Adam Shankman (who fared much better, if you ask me, with his stage-to-screen translation of "Hairspray") keeps most of those cliches firmly in place here, despite retooling the song list of late-80s glam metal and hard rock hits by about a third of the show's jukebox playlist and completely re-imagining the character of Stacee Jaxx, a metal god and lead singer of the fictional band Arsenal who is about to embark on a solo career. Whereas the stage show plays Jaxx as a little more pathetic and slimy, Shankman and Cruise truly capture Jaxx in a god-like aura, albeit one tinged with a dose of pathetic and slimy if you don't buy into the tao of rock-or-die.
Sherrie (Julianne Hough) and Drew (Diego Boneta) are two young wanna-be-singers working at the Bourbon Room, a club on the strip in L.A. where Arsenal got its start and will now play its final show. The bar's owner, Dennis Dupree (a really awful Alec Baldwin - and I love Alec Baldwin - in an ill-fitting wig) gets taken for a ride by Jaxx's manager (played to smarmy perfection by Paul Giamatti, though frankly he's done this kind of part too many times now for me to be amazed by it), who swipes most of the profits. But then Sherrie and Drew hit a road bump in their relationship when...song, song, song, song, song...
Ah...the film doesn't give a shit, so why should we? Because none of this matters without Cruise's Jaxx. As I said before, Cruise is that good. There will be some debate, I suspect, as to whether or not Cruise's work is a caricature of an inebriated rock star or the dramatic embodiment of one. Though its clear that Axl Rose was Cruise's primary inspiration - and he nails Rose's mannerisms down to his constant state of being tipped at a 30-degree angle to the right - I truly believe that Cruise took this role dead seriously. He's funny as hell, but that's because Cruise works his ass off for it (and when we first see Jaxx, he's quite literally ass-less). Jaxx travels eccentrically in an oversized yak fur coat with a monkey named Hey Man and greets women by grabbing one of their breasts as only a rock start could get away with without being accused of sexual assault. (He pulls this off with follow-up remarks about the quality of their...hearts.) But even with how funny he was, I saw Cruise as the one serious thing in a sea of silly. He grounds the film and gives it humanity. How much you understand Jaxx, consequently, depends a lot on how much you understand Jon Bon Jovi or Brett Michael or David Lee Roth or Vince Neil or Sebastian Bach.
I have so much respect for an actor who clearly puts in the work, and Cruise has done that. He's studied the moves and the fashion, the attitudes and the behaviors. And to top that, he studied guitar and voice, competently pulling off everything from Guns N' Roses "Paradise City" to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive." But mostly, Cruise accurately portrays the pure sexuality of an 80s hair metal front man, disciples all of Jim Morrison. His tight leather pants are constantly unbuttoned/unlaced at the top, the sweat always glistening in a trail down his lower back. One can almost smell the gin and perspiration whenever Cruise is on screen. He gives the film a level of pure sexuality that is shocking for a PG-13 film because it feels so much dirtier than anything that is actually said or shown.
Sadly, the blessing of Cruise is a curse, because "Rock of Ages" noticeably sags whenever he is not around; you are constantly waiting for his return. Hough and Boneta are attractive and bland; we can buy their innocence and their dreams but they are every boy and every girl (though perhaps that's by design). A scene involving Baldwin and Russell Brand as his best friend permanently decimates the memory of REO Speedwagon's "Can't Fight This Feeling." Catherine Zeta-Jones appears as a character not in the original show, and for good reason. As the wife of the mayor, she's trying to shut down the smutty strip and its loose morals. Her musical numbers are fun - remember, she won an Oscar for doing some snappy musical numbers a few years ago - but her presence here makes Bryan Cranston's work as the mayor unneeded and ridiculous; the film's plot is too light to hold the weight of the stories involving Brand and Cranston and so neither come off as remotely believable. And then there's the incomparable Mary J. Blige, who shows up for the last third of the movie to blow the roof off the musical numbers but is otherwise wasted here.
It doesn't seem like Shankman made the same definitive decisions about the film as a whole that Cruise seemed to make about playing Jaxx, and so "Rock of Ages" is all over the map with moments of camp and competence, placing it far below filmed musicals like "West Side Story" and "Chicago" and somewhere around "Nine" and "Rent." And for all of the song swapping and medley repackaging he did (check out the differences between the cast album and the film soundtrack on Amazon), couldn't Shankman at least make the decision to retire the use of "We Built This City"? First of all, that song is the LEAST hard rocking song on the planet and always has been. And second, the song was so prominently featured in last year's "The Muppets" that its more than gotten its wear in its second life. Let's be done with that one!
I could go on and on about the inconsistencies of "Rock of Ages" and dream about what it could have been and what it wasn't, but it does me more good to focus on what it is. And for me, it is a reminder of my formative years, a cinematic love-letter to the three greatest loves of my life (music, movies and musicals), and a showpiece for an actor who's never given the credit he deserves. And for those reasons alone, star rating or what not, I had a blast watching "Rock of Ages." Any movie about people who are filled with music and desperate to live out days with songs in each one can't be that bad by me. So thank you, o mediocre film musical, for reminding me that when there's music, heaven isn't too far away...
2.5 out of 4
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