In the three-quarters of a century since then, a number of bands have left an indelible stamp on rock music, captivating millions and pushing the genre to new heights in the process. Rock of Ages is only recommended for audiences with a taste for highly processed cheese, but it did leave me hopeful that the next decade may see the rise of Weird Tom Cruise.Combining elements of rhythm and blues, country, jazz, and gospel, rock music has had a strong cultural impact throughout America and the world since its inception in the 1940s and 1950s.
Cruise’s portrait of the rock star as empty-eyed nihilist doesn’t really belong in this gaudy pop trinket of a movie-it’s both too outsized and too inward-but that’s precisely what makes for its fascination. When Cruise and Akerman have lurid (but still PG-13) sex atop an air-hockey table while singing Foreigner’s “I Want to Know What Love Is,” Cruise’s expressions of erotic anguish are like something out of Steve McQueen’s sex-addiction drama Shame, with a hint of tragic drag queen thrown in. The isolation and paranoia brought on by extreme fame is something Tom Cruise clearly understands from the inside out-and what we know, or think we know, about the actor’s personal eccentricities can’t help but color our understanding of Stacee as well. But especially in his scenes with Giamatti and Malin Akerman (as a Rolling Stone critic who‘s the only one with the guts to call Stacee on his ersatz-Marlon Brando B.S.), Cruise goes to a deep, dark, almost deliberately repellent place I’m not sure he’s ever been before (in Magnolia, maybe, and in a comic mode as the profane studio head Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder). He doesn’t sing much, and the one big onstage number he’s given-shredding Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” under a rain of shaken-up beer from the audience-relies heavily on postproduction and backup singing, probably to mask his vocal shortcomings. The real reason to see Rock of Ages, though, is Tom Cruise. abjection stories: “I’m a stripper at the Venus Room.” “I’m in a boy band.” “You win.”) (I did enjoy some of the details of the lead couple’s third-act slide into despair, including a conversation in which they attempt to one-up each other’s L.A.
Attractive young people enthusiastically covering classic rock songs is hardly a commodity in short supply these days, and a little of Sherrie and Drew’s wholesome head banging goes a long way. in search of singing fame, falls for fellow Bourbon Room employee and hair-band aspirant Drew (Diego Boneta), who woos her under the Hollywood sign with an acoustic version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’ ” (“I can’t believe you just wrote that!” marvels Sherrie.) Hough and Boneta have pipes and perkiness to spare, but watching them belt out “Jukebox Hero” to each other in an LP-filled Tower Records store feels reminiscent of an American Idol medley or an episode of Glee. Finally, in a bland romantic plot that takes up far more of the film than it ought to, Sherrie (Julianne Hough), an Oklahoma ingénue come to L.A.
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