Moroni's Review of "Rock of Ages"

It was Father's Day, and, after a kind of hard week, I was ready for some lighter fare.  So when the girls told me that they would take me to a movie, I picked "Rock of Ages".

I didn't regret it.

The movie is cheesy.  But it is funny - sometimes unintentionally so.  All in all, it is great fun.

It seems that "Glee" has changed the landscape of our entertainment culture, making a musical like "Rock of Ages" possible.  All of the songs are big-hair anthems that I grew up with in the 1980s, and I couldn't help but finding myself singing along.

Who cares about the story when you have got great music like this?  Based on a Broadway play, the story tells the story of two young aspiring musicians - Drew Boley (played by Diego Boneta) and Sherrie Christian (played by the annoying Julianne Hough) - who move to Los Angeles in a 1980s that barely resembles the '80s I knew and grew up in.  They both meet at a rock club on the Sunset Strip called the Bourbon Club, owned by two rockers played by Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin (both of whom stole the show).

The story is centered around the final show of Arsenal, an imaginary rock band headed by Tom Cruise as the Axl Rose-esque Stacee Jaxx.  Cruise's performance is beautifully incoherent.  (All my wife Temple could notice was Jaxx's abs.  LOL)  There is a fiendish plot by Jaxx's sleazy manager (in a brilliant performance by Paul Giamatti) to take all of the proceeds for himself, and the mayor's wife (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) who believes that rock and roll is Satan's music and is bound and determined to clean up the Strip and close down the club.

Every other tune is a rock classic from the '80s, and the characters break into song every couple of minutes. However, to me, having grown up in the '80s, it seemed a bit incongruous.  When did headbangers ever belt out "We Built This City" with passion?  The rockers I knew would have puked at the thought.  And the story takes place in 1987.  Which rocker was into Foreigner by then?

There were a couple of cool things.  I fought back waves of nostalgia when one of the scenes took place in Tower Records, one of my inner sanctums as a youth.  Rather than paying attention to the movie, I looked at the vinyl collection in the background.  Some set designer placed such gems as Christian Death and Killing Joke in the background.

The other fun part of the movie were the mash-ups.  Rarely was an '80s anthem sung by itself.  It was brilliantly combined with another classic.  "Juke Box Hero" with "I Love Rock 'N' Roll".  "We Built This City" with "We're Not Gonna Take It".

And the best part of the whole movie - a duet between Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin singing "Can't Fight This Feeling".

This is a movie that laughs at itself.  Hence, it is fun.  My wives and I loved it.  A few days later, my wife Temple bought the soundtrack.