I got excited when I first saw this on my Plex lineup that I do not decide on. It was just there one day and when I saw the cast I thought to myself that this almost has to be good! Well, I suppose there is someone out there that this sort of thing would appeal to but I am definitely not that person.
For those that are unaware this movie is based upon a successful Broadway musical with the same name that celebrates and features many renditions of popular 80's rock music, mostly hair-metal.
I was alive during that time in music history so I thought that this movie would end up appealing to me but this was before I realized that it was going to be a musical where the actors either fake or really do cover famous rock songs, albeit rather poorly.
When the film starts out with a badly performed Sweet Child O' Mine I already was starting to roll my eyes. I would have preferred if they had just included the actual song but I quickly figured out what that wasn't happening.
It is difficult for me to say who the main characters are in this film actually but I think it is these two, which also annoyed me. These teenagers/ 20 somethings are dreamers in Hollywood who followed their dreams to come to that part of the world with hopes of making it big in music. The first number that both of them do are just terrible and the setup for how they get all the people around them to join in with the songs that they are singing is once again, cringe as hell.
The story is nonsensical and basically is all about Christian women's groups wanting to shut down rock n roll because it is too sexual and for the devil or something. Whatever! They had to try to weave a story in there I guess.
The main focus of this Christian group is the fictional Bourbon Room bar and the owner, Dennis Dupree who is an aging rocker of some fame on the strip, and the character is unconvincingly and poorly paid by one of my least favorite actors, Alec Baldwin. The other main focus of the group is singer/performer Stacee Jaxx and since I always try to find some redeeming quality about films I'll go ahead and say that Tom Cruise does a good job of playing this role.
That's really the only positive thing that I can say about this film. Everyone else's performance was absolutely dreadful. It was surprising to me that Russel Brand was as bad as he was in this movie although the script can mostly be blamed for that. I say that I am surprised about him because out of everyone in the cast he is probably the only one that is actually a pretty great singer in real life.
Sometimes I enjoy watching movies that are this bad simply for the laughs at the "so bad its good" aspects but that simply isn't possible with Rock of Ages. They somehow managed to take beloved music from the 80's and a bunch of rather talented actors and actresses and ruin all of that. The story is so retarded that it seems like they hired a bunch of children and asked them to make a story that can somehow incorporate the songs, or just the names of the songs, into a storyline.
I didn't make it all the way through this mess of a movie but I presume that rock n roll prevails and the good guys win, big surprise.
Should I watch it?
It should be evident at this point what I am going to say. I think the only reason that anyone would have for even having a peek at this is to confirm what it is that I am saying and that this is one of the most ill-contrived big-budget films of all time. They lost a ton of money on this after the marketing budget is factored in and it is estimated that this gamble cost New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. and estimated $100 million in losses. All I can say is that I am happy that this flopped badly because had it not, we probably would have been subjected to a part 2.
Absolutely terrible idea, acting, and execution in every way imaginable.
Man I don't even know where you can legally stream this but you shouldn't bother anyway