What’s going to happen here is, since Rock of Ages fails to build up any sort of story anyone can really care about, you’ll either like it (not love it) or hate it, depending on whether or not you liked this music then, now, or ever. The best moments come from Paul Giamatti as Stacee Jaxx’ smarmy manager and the over-the-top love sequences between Cruise and Rolling Stone journalist Constance (Malin Akerman). The central love story between Sherrie and Drew is cool as ice, even as they are given many numbers together, the chemistry is never squeezed out of them from Shankman, which makes the entire film fall flat. It comes across as both obvious, and weird. Zeta-Jones at one point leads a group of religious “soccer moms” in a half-suggestive rendition of “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” in front of a poster of a codpiece-wearing Tom Cruise. There’s no doubt that the musical numbers are mostly well thought out, even if their humor is at times obviously forced. Meanwhile, ambition from a ruthless politician (Bryan Cranston) puts more pressure on the club as he sets his pious wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) loose to go after the club and heavy metal music with her groups of religious organizations in order to cleanup the Strip. Drew helps her get a gig there as a waitress and the two begin a romance, as the club’s owner is struggling to keep the club afloat, banking on an upcoming final gig by the band Arsenal, whose unreliable frontman Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise channeling his character from Magnolia) is planning to go solo. There she meets Drew (Diego Boneta), frontman for a rock band working as a bartender at the Sunset Strip’s famous Bourbon Club. Director Adam Shankman’s big screen adaptation of the Broadway musical of the same name comes replete with the big musical numbers, MTV-era productions, and Reagan-era excesses one should be expecting, as well as the songs we all remember, like them or not.Īt the center of the story is Sherrie (Julianne Hough), a small town girl from Oklahoma who leaves home and travels to Los Angeles with dreams of hitting it big as a singer. If the names of bands like Poison, Journey, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake and Guns ‘n’ Roses spark memories for you, then you may well know what to expect when you go into this film. Rock of Ages is a glitzy jukebox musical set in the “hair band” era of the 1980s.
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