Shawn's The Rocker Review

2008 Movie #95 - The Rocker

So I'm not positive about this but based on the weekend numbers it looks like The Rocker could go down as one of the biggest flops not only of the year, but of all time as well. This is actually too bad because while it's certainly not the best movie ever, it's not hard to name a ton of other movies I've seen this year that were far worse and yet made tons more money. Hell I could name at least 60 movies from this year that qualify I bet. I do think it's too bad that this movie will go down as such a spectacular failure. I'm going to see The House Bunny in just a couple of hours and I can't imagine it being any better than this one, yet it did so much better.

The Rocker is the definition of a harmless, pretty generic cookie cutter movie. It does nothing new, reminds you of many other movies, and yet it manages to entertain for 90 or so minutes before you forget about it the second you leave the theatre. It's hard to hate it, but also tricky to love it at the same time.

Rainn Wilson does a pretty good job in the lead role. His character is pretty different from the one he plays on The Office, but it looks like this will probably be the last time he gets to play the lead in a movie. Again it's too bad because he handles things well here. There is a little too much focus on him falling down or getting hit by things. These moments are eye-rollingly bad and happen far too often. The rest of the cast does fine too, with Jason Sudeikas being the stand out as the band's asshole manager. Also the guy who plays the nephew might as well be Jonah Hill. They look similar and their voices and delivery are just about identical. Also some kudos has to go to the actor playing the singer since it turns out he actually did do all of the singing for the songs in the movie.

This brings me to my next point. I remember watching that terrible Be Cool movie where all these characters were fighting for representation of this one singer. It goes on for the whole movie until finally you hear her sing and you can't help but wonder "what the hell is the big deal here? Why are people killing each other to help put this music in the world?" It sounded like every single song/artist at the time and really killed the movie. There was no way this many people were going crazy for this song and artist after actually hearing her perform.

The Rocker had a similar vibe for me. The whole movie makes a huge deal of how amazing this band is and how great and original their songs are, but when you actually hear them you just wonder what the shit everyone is talking about. They arent bad songs, but you could turn on the radio right now and hear 10 different songs in a row that sound just like them. I know I shouldn't expect a movie like this to produce groundbreaking music but if so much of your dialogue is based on talking about how great the music is, you better have the fucking tunes to back it up.

In conclusion, this one will probably be out of theatres even by the time this review is posted but if it heads to a cheap theatre, you might as well check it out. I just kind of feel bad for this one. It's such a spectacular failure when it actuality, it really isn't that bad.

** 1/2 /5