Rock of Ages: Good for What It Is

If you’re someone who hears the opening notes of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” and you immediately start singing along, then you’re going to love Rock of Ages, director Adam Shankman’s big screen adaptation of the popular Tony Award-nominated Broadway musical.

And make no mistake about it: a musical this most certainly is. There’s no ambiguity as the opening scene finds us in 1987 as our heroine, Sherrie (Julianne Hough), is on her way to LA from Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a packed Greyhound bus, singing Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” while the rest of the passengers all join in for the motorin’ chorus. When she arrives directly to the Sunset Strip – she wants to be a singer, naturally – her precious record collection is stolen and she’s aided by our hero, Drew (Diego Boneta), a barback at the Strip’s biggest venue, The Bourbon Room. Next thing you know, she’s got herself a job thanks to the club’s owner, Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin), needing to fill a waitress position, and she’s falling in love. Of course, trouble is on its way.

Rock of Ages is flooded with glam rock hits from the 1980s whose lyrics tell the simple – yet increasingly murky – story of love and the perils of fame. While his visage graces the front-and-center position on the posters, Tom Cruise takes the final “and Tom Cruise as” credit in the titles, making one assume that he’ll be a peripheral character, perhaps like when he played Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder. This is not the case at all; get ready for a lot of Cruise doing his best Vince Neill. The beginning storyline implies that this wouldn’t be the case, though: the opening act introduces us to the legend that is the band Arsenal and its frontman Stacee Jaxx (Cruise), who is performing one last show before Jaxx goes solo. That last show is to be played, where else, but The Bourbon Room. All of this wrapped around a Footloose-esque plot where the Mayor’s wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) has made it her personal vendetta to shut down The Bourbon Room because of the spiritual corruption from rock music.

But instead of the whole film building toward this epic show where all of these characters will come to blows, Jaxx and his manager Paul Gill (Paul Giamatti) show up relatively early on just in time for the film to lose a lot of the momentum it had built up with the Sherrie/Drew love story – both of whom take a backseat for what seems like rather long swathes (and songs) of the film to explore Jaxx and his budding relationship with Rolling Stone reporter Constance Sack (Malin Ackerman). It wouldn’t surprise me if, once Cruise signed on to play the drugged-out, jaded, lonely rock star, screenwriters Justin Theroux, Chris D’Arienzo (who wrote the musical book for the original play), and Allen Loeb beefed up Jaxx’s role with more musical numbers and a stronger story line to accommodate – and take advantage of – his own movie star power. 

At 123 minutes long, Rock of Ages rocks for about 20 minutes too long, like a band so proud of itself that it stays out for a third encore despite the crowd already making for the exits. Instead of focusing on the Sherrie/Drew love story and having the other characters fit into their world, it seems like everyone gets their own full story arcs – notably the Jaxx/Sack relationship, but also the not-so-platonic friendship between Dupree and his right-hand man Lonny (Russell Brand), the philandering mayor (Bryan Cranston), and even Mary J. Blige’s strip-club owner. Not to say that it’s not all entertaining or well done: the choreography and set pieces are all fun, the song mashups sound fantastic, as do all of the performers’ voices – except for Baldwin who at least makes up for it with his customary dry humor and comedic timing. And since this is a syrupy summer musical, why not extend the story just as an excuse to fit in more nostalgic hits from yesteryear? Long story short, for those who genuinely (or just ironically) enjoy the idea of watching Monster Ballads come to life on the big screen, Rock of Ages delivers.