Rock Of Ages Review

Does this star-studded musical adaptation rock out the show?
Do you want a brilliantly emotional ensemble film that ties together years of continuity for one great team-up? Go see Avengers. Are you looking for an epic time-travelling adventure featuring two of the world's best loved movie actors? Men In Black III is waiting in the wings. Rock Of Ages makes no claim to aspire to the particular strengths of those two Summer Of Film greats, and to a large extent comes out much better for it. One of its own primal strengths is certainly its own confidence to belt out killer renditions of 80s songs amongst occassionally Glee-esque drama and heapings of raunchy and satirical comedy no matter how ambitious that goal seems. Few other films you'll catch in this blockbuster season boast such vigour, such sheer (bordering on) filmic arrogance in terms of the setpieces that are pulled off and the classic songs thrown into no-bars-held hashes with one another at the writers' free will. Before you go worrying that iconic tracks of the rock genre such as Shadows Of The Night, I Wanna Rock and Wanted Dead Or Alive suffer in integrity from clashing with their fellow competitors in 'remixes', you can sleep safe and rest assured in the knowledge that the team really do know what they're doing here, and every piece of music that has been brought into the equation either solo or with another classic tagged on is toned and handled pitch-perfectly in just about every instance. Whether there's a little bit of an overdose in the balance of music to general drama and dialogue is really up to the personal taste of the viewer, yet to me this truly harkened back to the classic West End musical movie adaptations of old (and new) like Mamma Mia in the glorious sense of fun and aplomb that presents the whole experience in a hugely positive light. In terms of casting, the team have got things spot on, too: from Tom Cruise's sublime acting comeback (bar Mission Impossible, his roster hasn't been stellar recently) as drunken rock icon Stacee Jaxx to Russell Brand's incredibly familiar performance as bartender Lonny and Alec Baldwin as his 'lover' Dennis Dupree, to Mary J Blige's dazzling cameo as a strip club owner, the marketers of the movie sure knew how to pick their stars, and none of them feel as if they're a shallow inclusion. To be fair, Julianne Hough and Diego Bonata are still evidently finding their feet in terms of leading the show as protagonists Sherrie and Drew respectively, yet at least here the focus on their characters is a little more marginal than it was in the West End production, instead shifting a little more to Stacee's affairs outside of his gigs and the sudden rock vs. government battle that ensues in the late acts of the piece. The narrative of the original show was something I criticised when I first saw it on stage, but if anything the trims that have been made here actually do it a lot more justice, making for a suitably packed two hours of fun, romance and songs aplenty. Again, it's important to level your expectations in a good way, as this is a very different kind of film to others I've awarded the same score to such as The Hunger Games and The Hangover: Part II. All the same, as I've already said, the strengths of this musical extravaganza are too great to miss, and its slightly shallow storyline is hugely overshadowed by the sheer exuberance of confidence it finds in its fantastic setlist, well-rounded/star-studded cast and the variety of the setpieces on offer. Some critics have lamented Rock Of Ages for the former element, but I believe to do so is to miss the point of its existence, as this really is fantastic fun the likes of which the Summer Of Film rarely finds beneath its layer of sequels and reboots, the music of which raises the comedy above the majority of those in that specific genre that have been released this year.
4.5/5