Start with some cheese. Then add some singing. Then show how the characters are in love. Add some more singing. Include a moral message behind the songs. Finish off with some more singing.
Like every other genre, it's easy to get it 'right', but even with all these ingredients being present in Rock of Ages, the film still feels a little bit half baked.
Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) is just a small town girl... who has decided to take the midnight train to... LA. She wants to make it big as a singer, but as soon as she makes it to the big city where the streets are paved with gold, she is mugged and falls helplessly into the arms of barman/band member, Drew Boley (Diego Boneta). She is given a job straight away at the struggling Bourbon club, where manager Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin) and his assistant Lonny (Russell Brand) are organising the last ever gig with Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) and his band, Arsenal. However, Mayor Mike Whitmore (Bryan Cranston) and his wife, Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones) are trying to clean up the streets of LA and the first place they are looking to close down is the Bourbon club.
It's a big plot, that contains a lot of characters. I'm sure it works on the stage (I'm trying to write this review having only seen the film, not the stage musical), as I'm sure the stage musical has a lot more time to dedicate to each characters, but a compact film (this one being around 2 hours long) cannot really do each character justice.
The first time you realise this is when the main protagonists, Sherrie and Drew first meet and within 10 minutes they are on their first date at the Hollywood sign (awwww!!) and are singing a song showing how much in love they are. Then, within half an hour they are falling out and breaking up. It's breakneck speed stuff!
However, where the film really suffers is with some of it's supporting characters. Coming out particularly badly are the Mayor, his Secretary (Celina Beach) who he is supposed to be having an affair with and the Rolling Stones reporter, Constance Sack (Malin Akerman) who interviews Stacee Jaxx and immediately becomes his lover/number 1 groupie. They are just given no time to flourish, develop as characters or let us know at least a little bit about them. The worst is the Mayor and his Secretary - he is cheating on his wife all the way through the film, we even feel a little bit sorry for the bitchy wife, Patricia, yet he and his Secretary never get their comeuppance. They aren't even found out to be cheating...
Having said that, the film does make some genius casting choices. The two leads played by Hough and Boneta are passable, Hough coming out on top of both of them. However, Cruise as Stacee Jaxx was brilliant in every scene that he was in. He treads the line very carefully between being the complete washed up rocker and likeable rogue very well and his affection for his new lover after the Rolling Stones interview makes him that even more likeable. Zeta-Jones as the feminist Conservative protestor is also the shining light in every scene that she is in. Sometimes she flexes her jazz hands a bit too much, but she never becomes irritating (which is a good thing, because it's her cheating husband who is the real Antagonist here...)
Having previously directed the last big musical to come from Hollywood, Hairspray, Director Adam Shankman handles the material he is given competently. I would like to see his future films focus more on character relationships and for him to try and get more of a raw emotion from his actors, but as fluffy romantic musicals that he has directed so far go, it's fair enough.
So, if you like musicals to be light on the drama but heavy on the cheese, Rock of Ages will be the film for you. It's the perfect waste of two hours on a rainy afternoon to try and brighten your day, just that little bit.
**½ / *****
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