Movie Review: Rock Of Ages

     New movie rule:  if a bunch of actors are cast to sing in a musical made up of all ready recorded rock songs stay away!  I couldn't help but think of Mama Mia and Pierce Brosnan's cringe inducing performance as Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Russel Brand and others labored through this collection of 80's hair metal classics.  Why put people in musicals that can't sing?  Rock of Ages even went one step worse then Mama Mia by casting Mary J. Blige in a small part.  Her professional chops made the amateurs sound that much worse.  Is there a better way to highlight how poor Tom Cruise's singing voice is then to have him trade off verses with a brilliant soul songstress?  Would the movie have been as marketable without Cruise and Baldwin?  Probably not, but it would have been more entertaining and enjoyable with people who could actually sing.
     It doesn't seem that counter intuitive to me when making a musical to cast singers and not actors, but one of the things this movie seemed to suffer from the most was a creative team that didn't understand how to manage talent.  The lead female role was played by Julianne Hough.  Now, I never watched Dancing With the Stars, but from everything I've been told she is an amazing dancer so you would think she would be featured in a number of great dance numbers but that just isn't the case.  Hough is left to be just window dressing in many of the dance numbers never once showing that she had anymore of a dance background or was anymore agile then Alec Baldwin. 
     The movie was filled with "what the heck" moments as it plot-lessly plodded through it's 80's soundtrack.  It could never decided exactly what tone it wanted to convey.  Was it supposed to be a cheeky send up of 80's opulence or a serious investigation of the trappings of fame?  In one scene they went from a wonderfully acted dialogue between Cruise and Malin Akerman about the isolation fame brings right into a cooky "sex" scene that would have fit right into a Naked Gun movie and shift that left the audience with whiplash.  Another horrible scene was the number with Baldwin and Brand when out of the blue we find out that the two club workers have actually been in love with each other for years.  I'm pretty sure we were supposed to find it funny, but the joke was that two men are in love.  I realize that the movie was set in the 80's, but it's playing to a 2012 audience, just the fact that two men are gay isn't funny anymore.
     I wanted to like this movie.  I wanted to come into the theater and have a good time watching a light fun movie.  The horrible singing, the non-existent plot, the schizophrenic tone, the mismanagement of talent was just too much to get over.  I know that musicals are never meant to be world altering fare.  They don't give us deep insight or earth shaking revelations and very rarely do they have anything other movies would call a plot, but this movie was excruciatingly bad.  The one thing the movie can hold it's hat on is the nostalgic soundtrack, which is wonderful when not being sung by actors, but if that's what you're going to see this movie for, just pull out your old albums or cds or IPOD playlist and listen to the real thing.