He will ROCK YOU
Tom Cruise and Rock of Ages miss a few notes
The idea of Tom Cruise palming boobs with rock star entitlement isn’t that hard to imagine. You’d just think it would be sexier than it is in Rock of Ages, a largely inert ode to the pyrotechnics of ’80s arena rock.
Originally designed as a Broadway musical, the show is a jukebox journey down memory lane for all the X-ers who remember the heyday of George Michael, and the priapic prowess of Van Halen.
The soundtrack is littered with hits from the era. From Waiting for a Girl Like You to Rock You Like a Hurricane and I Want To Know What Love Is, just about every excruciating “slow dance” number is hauled out of cold storage for a cheap round of sticky nostalgia.
For those who liked the music the first time around, the splashy resurrection will do exactly what it was supposed to do: Tickle a sweet sense of personal connection and fasten the viewer to the screen through shared experience.
It’s not just the music that’s familiar, but the entire plot about a gal from small town America who takes a bus to Los Angeles in search of fame and fortune.
Opening with a number that firmly establishes director Adam Shankman’s (Hairspray) approach, we watch Sherrie (Julianne Hough) sit on a Hollywood-bound Greyhound as she listens to her Walkman, pondering her dreams of becoming a singer.
Within five minutes, the entire bus is chorusing Sister Christian — and either you are on the ride, or you’re looking at your watch.
Clearly, it’s more fun to hop aboard any musical bandwagon, even if it is a stinky diesel of a commercial vehicle, than to sit back and stew about how stupid everything is. Moreover, Rock of Ages isn’t hard to watch.
Even if you hated the music that frames this piece of forced celebration, Shankman and the cast of notable performers ensure there’s plenty of compelling moments to go around.
Front and centre are Hough and co-star Diego Boneta, the young couple who fall in love at the top of the reel only to be torn asunder. Shankman drives them straight into the brick wall of jealousy, forcing Sherrie and Drew (Boneta) to pursue separate paths: She becomes a stripper, and he forms a boy band.
It’s all tragedy-lite, in addition to stock romantic cliche, but this is a musical and a certain amount of cheesy predictability is par for the course.
Moreover, it’s something Shankman does particularly well.
Shankman is a showman, and even though Rock of Ages doesn’t work on any emotional level whatsoever as a result of its self-con- scious smirk, there’s plenty of spectacle to chug.
Fashion accounts for half the visual humour, thanks to Alec Baldwin’s horribly bad jeans and ratty hair, as well as Boneta’s boy-band bagginess. Tom Cruise is supposed to supply the rest as the embodiment of an arena rock god, a composite of everyone from Axl Rose to Jim Morrison: Stacee Jaxx.
Now, forget for a moment that his name is Stacee (with two Es), and try to imagine the muskiest force of manliness you can muster.
Jaxx is supposed to ooze sexuality with his leather pants and snake-headed codpiece.
When he addresses the camera for his steamy, expository close-up, he tells us he is the shadow side of every self — a throbbing, desirous force of carnal communion.
Hell, he doesn’t just have six-pack abs. He has a metaphysical and narrative purpose. Sadly, all we really notice is the abs . . . and the pants . . . and the codpiece.
Cruise makes for a very curious embodiment of male sexuality because he just isn’t macho. He’s cute in his tighty-whities, but watching him slink around the sets like a mechanical cobra feels surreal because, for all the creaking leather, it’s entirely unsexy.
Surprisingly, it’s Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin who carry the manly chemistry to the camera barrel as the operators of The Bourbon Room — a Whisky-AGo-Go kind of place on the verge of being shut down by a right- wing mayor and his wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones).
Brand and Baldwin surrender to their moronic roles completely, and actually redeem great swaths of content because they bring the right balance of drama and comedy, pathos and perfect inanity.
For the most part, Rock of Ages is just an awkward and palpably expensive mess with an emotionally manipulative soundtrack. The hair is back-combed, but the jokes fall flat, leaving this tonguein-cheek ode to the ’80s a little like the era that spawned it: halfforgotten by the time it’s over.