whegiga.blogg.se

Let's call it the tradition of deliberately misunderstanding cultural conflict, of reducing it to cliché and fantasy in order to fit it into a let's-put-on-a-show musical. But I'm here to tell you that this movie is almost too weird to be believed, and that if you share even a fraction of my taste for perversity you should check it out.Īfter its fashion, "Rock of Ages" - the screenplay is by Justin Theroux, Allan Loeb and Chris D'Arienzo, writer of the Broadway show - is in fact true to its own tradition, one that's a little difficult to describe. But not to put too fine a point on it, if you ain't lookin' for nothin' but a good time, why should you resist? Some people who claim to understand the public appetite smell an expensive flop here, and that well may be. It's a little bit like eating a Happy Meal at 4:30 in the morning after a long night of Jägermeister and nitrous oxide. I'm not claiming this movie is good for you, Lord knows. This movie could hardly seem more weirdly artificial if it had been jointly hatched by David Lynch and John Waters, and raised in a lab on a steady diet of Foreigner hits and original Broadway-cast recordings.

"Rock of Ages" is so remarkably fake it's almost ur-fake or meta-fake you can watch the globs of trans fats congealing on its preternaturally bright surfaces as it cools.

Compared to this fake musical set in a fake version of the past that spins a ridiculously fake narrative of pop-culture history, "Mamma Mia" (the last jukebox musical to be vilified by critics and embraced by the public) is pretty much a mumblecore movie. It isn't trying to be real it's trying to be faker than any fake thing has ever been before. "Rock of Ages" is an effulgent celebration of fakeness. But if your objections are based on the fact that "Rock of Ages" seems unrealistic and phony - that it doesn't paint an accurate picture of Los Angeles in the 1980s or rock 'n' roll or much of anything else - then you're seriously barking up the wrong tree. I mean, it is obnoxious, not to mention thoroughly artificial (and hilarious). Blige to the utterly uncanny Tom Cruise - hoofing, hooting and generally goofballing their way through a bunch of production numbers built around a random assortment of pop-rock hits from the '70s and '80s. Now, I understand that some may find the premise of this picture thoroughly obnoxious: An odd collection of movie stars and pop icons - from Alec Baldwin to Russell Brand, and from Catherine Zeta-Jones to Mary J. If it's possible for a cultural product to completely lack either authenticity or sincerity, and yet possess a joyful innocence, that product is the jukebox musical "Rock of Ages," a Broadway hit that now reaches the big screen as a ludicrous summer entertainment from director and choreographer Adam Shankman.