Rock of Ages is a musical film featuring cover performances of metal classics from the 70’s and 80’s. It even pokes a bit of fun at the rise of the boy band craze in the late 80’s/early 90’s. It has an interesting mix of cast members – some big superstars and some fairly unknown. And of course, there has to be a love story thown in there somewhere…

Story: I don’t know that I can exactly identify a story or plot. It just seems like this film is a series of movie cliche’s strung together. Small town girls heads to the big city – gets her suitcase stolen as soon as she walks off the bus… A young, ambitious guy rescues her – gets her a job at the club where he’s a busboy – they fall in love – there’s a misunderstanding that splits them up then they end up together in the end. Blah, blah blah…

And we can’t forget the aging, but legendary rock star who’s always drunk and inviting groupies to his dressing room… the sleazy club owner – the even sleazier agent – the self-righteous community activist intent to ruin the aging star’s career and of course, the investigative reporter who wants to crack the big story only to find out that she and the aging superstar are destined to be together. Blah, blah blah…

Nothing to speak of… moving on…

Performances: Julianne Hough was good as the small town girl. Diego Boneta was good as the aspiring rock star/busboy and Tom Cruise was interesting as the aging rock star. I think of all of the performances, his was the biggest stretch. Alec Baldwin and the club owner and Paul Giamati as the agent were every bit the cliche as well as Catherine Zeta-Jones as the Mayor’s self-righteous wife who was formerly one of Tom Cruise’s character’s groupies.

The only other performances were Brian Cranston as the cheating-with-one-of-his-aides-Mayor and Malin Akerman as the investigative reporter.

No oscar performances here…

Visual: Now we’ve got something to talk about. The stage performances were great. The most clever element of this film was the selection of songs to cover. The costumes were spot-on and you can’t have metal and hard rock without hair and makeup.

Rating: I’m gonna give Rock of Ages a B-. And that’s only because I love the songs so much. For the lack of creativity in story – which is usually my litmus test – balanced by the out-right performances, I have to give it slightly better than average because it is a musical and if the music is good…

Some part of me is also swayed by Journey and Pat Benatar and Def Leppard. That’s so MTV in the 80’s and that was my generation of MTV. BUT, I’m glad I waited to see this on DVD. It’s a renter for sure. Get it if one of the actors is a favorite of yours. If not, save it for a day when you have nothing else to do…