Watch Rock of Ages Streaming
Is Rock of Ages timeless or maybe tired? Maybe both. Featuring its stellar cast and equally great performances, you'd think all will likely be well. Choosing wrong. Rock of Ages jogs my memory in the real rock opera, Tommy, which have been turned in a movie 37 during the past. Tommy was ground-breaking to be a record, powerful on stage, but fell flat on-screen. Watch Rock of Ages Online Exactly like Tommy, the trouble here may likely be a product or service through the treatment not the tunes.
First, the good: Tom Cruise fans, rejoice -- Cruise is terrific as Stacee Jaxx. Imagine combining design for Brett Michaels (today) while using the moves of Axl Rose (within his prime), and will supply you with a a sense the amazingly buff star's turn as being a rock god. Absolute confidence, Cruise owns the screen whenever he appears. Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are brilliant together. Their comic timing is impeccable and will be revisited in the future buddy film. Catherine Zeta-Jones reminded me quickly why she won an Oscar for Chicago. Malin Akerman is surprisingly and disarmingly funny.
Now, unhealthy: Sadly, these great performances couldn't please let me shake the unsettling feeling which i was watching a big-budget episode of Glee (Rock of Ages cost a reported $80 million to generate). These terrific actors are simply just supporting players on the admittedly talented but syrupy real stars in this movie. Julianne Hough is her ever-adorable self which hurts when we're required to suspend disbelief and imagine that she briefly gets to be a stripper (I couldn't). Equally cute Diego Boneta, who also displays a pleasant voice (in the The american idol show type of way) is well cast since the boy Juilanne would most likely enticed by on-screen. However i was never immersed in the movie. I became always consciously observing it. Even moments of laugh-out-loud humor could hardly save the opinion I had been watching a two-hour, highly sanitized, music video. In my opinion, the film would play better in my iPad, listening with headphones, than viewing it around the giant screen, where it felt homeless.
How ironic a film purportedly celebrating rock prominently featured a song voted by the readers of Rolling Stone magazine (also highlighted inside movie) because worst song in the 1980's. In line with the magazine, "We Built This City" won "what might be the biggest fly out victory inside the history of the Rolling Stone's Readers Poll." The song featured as well as it within a "mash-up" was another rock anthem, "We're Not Gonna Take It." I heard the chorus of their song on my own car radio along the way home in the theater because the new jingle for long Stay Hotels. How fitting. The film nearly put me to fall asleep. Plus, I produce a sincere plea to any or all television and movie producers -- enough already with "Don't Stop Believin'." Easily hear that song again (in a very show is not a senior high school musical) I will scream. Also, a lot of the film's numerous musical numbers felt forced well as over the highest on-screen. The exaggeration and campiness that works well very well around the Broadway stage and in many cases translated to film very well in director Adam Shankman's own 2007 adaptation of Hairspray, sometimes devolved into parodies that seemed more at home inside a skit on Saturday Night Live.
Perhaps My business is too harsh in calling video slick re-telling (or re-singing) with the tried-and-true "boy meets, girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back" formula, set to your soundtrack in the '80s (think more Broadway and much less Sunset Strip). Could not fight the casting or perhaps the performances or perhaps the material (cue rendition of "I Can't Fight This Feeling"). Of course, the play on which the film is based has enjoyed international success on stage. So perhaps it's just me being too old to "get it." The truth is, We are jaded in relation to music. As an guitar player myself for more than Forty years (brace for that final soundtrack reference), "I Love Rock 'n' Roll." I just now didn't love Rock of Ages.
