More than anything, however, I knew that nothing in this world would ever induce me to watch Thor again.
This left me with a couple of alternatives, and for reasons which currently elude me, I plumped for Rock of Ages.
Now, as can be seen from the number of them I've covered already, I'm quite partial to a musical every now and then. Not so much your Lloyd-Webber, admittedly, but show me something a little bit quirky or a little bit rock'n'roll, and you'll certainly get my attention and probably my affection, too.
The noughties trend for jukebox musicals, though, the ones where you take a bunch of pre-existing songs and then work them into a story? Leaves me completely cold, I'm afraid. If watching Mamma Mia is, as I'm led to believe, an essential induction ritual for membership of the Sisterhood, then I'll leave my ovaries at the door, thanks. While I'm aware there are exceptions, for the most part, everything about them seems awkward and contrived, a clumsy attempt at cashing in on people's most treasured memories.
Before I first saw it, however, Rock of Ages looked as though it might have possibilities - after all, it featured the music that I'd built my identity around as a teenager. Add in a cast featuring stalwarts like Paul Giamatti and Bryan Cranston, and I figured that it'd be virtually impossible for me to watch it without having a good time.
The story, such as it is, is classic boy meets girl. She's an aspiring singer fresh off the Greyhound from Tulsa, while he tends bar at one of LA's most famous rock venues. There's a plot where he breaks up with her because thinks she's slept with a rock legend, and another plot where an ambitious local politician wants to close down the venue, and it all plays out precisely as you'd expect. But then, movies like these aren't about the destination, they're about the journey...
The good
The cast appear to do their best with the material they've been given; as the young lovers, Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta are cute and personable even if they do play second fiddle to the grown-ups. Tom Cruise has enormous fun as washed-up rocker Stacee Jaxx, while Russell Brand provides the movie with a much-needed injection of energy every time he's on screen.Additionally, it's nice that former WWE Superstar Kevin Nash is still getting work from time to time.
The bad
The one thing I never expected when I started writing this blog is that it would occasionally leave me feeling so damned grimy. Not every day, not by any means, but at least once or twice a week I find myself watching something that looked like dumb, innocent fun but lands up filling me with a sense of creeping revulsion that a bunch of human beings thought a bunch of other human beings would find something like that enjoyable.Rock of Ages is, at its nonexistent heart, a piece of prefabricated corporate drivel that tarnishes the soul of everybody it touches, from the director to the performers to every single hapless viewer. It sucks the joy and the energy from much-loved songs of the 80s, crushing them out of context and twisting them into tortured medleys. It's so anodyne it makes Glee look like The Fall, and so sexless that for this scene, Tom Cruise and Malin Akerman were required to have their genitals surgically removed and replaced with injection-moulded plastic cups.*
What can you say about a film where the sole visible black character runs a strip club, or where the female lead seriously believes her only two career options are waiting tables or dancing in her underwear? Where cliche is ladled upon heaping portions of cliche, so a weak male politician with a taste for corporal punishment has a villainous wife who became uptight and sanctimonious to distance herself from the heartbreak in her own sexually-active past?
It's cheap, it's derivative and not so much misogynistic as downright misanthropic, and it makes me feel really, really bloody tired.
The verdict
Don't go there. Really. Life's too short and you deserve so very much better.*May not actually be true.
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