2012-366 Day 173 – Rock of Ages

So I managed to make some time to go to the movies today and, as is my custom, did so by myself. I went and saw Rock of Ages because I actually heard and then went to see the original musical first and wanted to see how they adapted it. Rock of Ages shares a unique distinction with one other musical (Les Miserables) in that I saw it before Jess did and introduced her to it. Les Mis came about as a happy accident, a family channel surf landed on it when I was in high school and we watched and enjoyed it together. Rock of Ages was different, in that I heard about a musical featuring a bunch of classic rock and decided I had to go find it. I got the soundtrack and it was a lot of fun, so I made Jess listen to it and the rest was history. We went with a group to see it at the Pantages last year and had an absolute blast.

Expectations going into the movie were actually pretty low, as I was well informed on all the changes that were being made to the musical and not happy with most of them. The got rid of some good characters and storylines to streamline it for the film, and even bumped one of my favorite numbers (“Hate Myself for Loving You”/”Heat of the Moment”). Casting Tom Cruise as Jaxx wasn’t helping matters either, although he wound up doing better than I expected.

Now I’m going to keep out of discussing the story for the simple reason that most of you don’t care. I will say that the thing I was most disappointed with was how flat the music was. Now I don’t mean flat tonally (at least I don’t think I do, I’m no Music major), but it was just so processed and overproduced that it felt nothing like musical music. I don’t know if I’m being quite clear with that, but it just felt like everyone was going through the motions and lip-syncing away. It was that lack of heart for the most part that was my biggest disappointment. The notable exception was Cruise’s performance of “Wanted Dead or Alive,” to me that was probably the best part of the movie. I did enjoy one of the new additions with the “Jukebox Hero”/”I Love Rock and Roll” set.

In all, I can’t recommend going to see it, although if you are completely unfamiliar with the stage musical I’d be curious to see what you thought. I do, however, recommend the stage version highly (for mature audiences, there is a strip club majorly involved in the second half of the show, although it’s an 80’s strip club, so I guess it’s not that bad), especially if you love any of the classic rock songs they featured.

Oh, one last funny thing, the original musical actually made it a point to mention that while it is titled after a Def Leppard song, they couldn’t get the rights to use any of it. The movie, however, had a couple Def Leppard songs (including “Rock of Ages”) peppered throughout (although not performed), so I guess they learned?

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 183.5 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 2-0 (5-1 Game Record, +9 Point Differential)
Fitocracy Level: 21 ID: disciplev1