Rock of Ages

★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

                Let's be clear, this movie was never to be a masterpiece. Nevertheless, it should have been much, much better. Filled with (mostly) corny old songs, clichéd characters and familiar Hollywood names, altogether involved in a silly first chances/last chances story seen hundreds of times before, „Rock of Ages“ had the potential to be fun. Unfortunately, it isn't.

                Young girl named Sherrie comes to the big city in search of love and fame, and you can see where that will go from the first number already. With the whole bus singing and the little girl in the end of song everything crumbled before it even had a chance to soar. Although the singing isn't all that bad, great music number is a rarity in this movie. Worthy of mention is just a sequence near the end of the movie where two crowds battle each other. Rockers led by Russell Brand's character and Christian moms led by Catherine Zeta-Jones' character. And the director managed to ruin that one too, focusing on an irrelevant reporter running between them. We could also mention famous Bon Jovi number „Wanted Dead or Alive“, but that's just because of a pretty good Tom Cruise's cool guy performance. Cruise is the brightest point of the movie. Malin Akerman, Paul Giamatti, Russell Brand and Bryan Cranston are worthy of mention too. And Alec Baldwin is likable, until he sings. Rest of the cast are bad, or I just can't shook off their impossibly stupid character arcs. Take for example Patricia Whitmore, Zeta-Jones' character. I would really like to know how many people didn't  guess what's her story right in the beginning. My guess is maybe one in a hundred.

                I really don't want to waste my time writing about this movie in detail. It should be noted that the songs were mostly ruined by completely unnecessary mixing them with each other, Mary J. Blige was redundant, and the movie contains the dumbest gay scene I've ever seen. If that sounds like your cup of tea, rock on!