Entertaining Crap

Rating: 5/10 (21 June 2002)

30 minutes into 'Rock Star', you'll feel like you're watching a made for TV movie. The entire first half hour is so totally unbelievable and cheesy that you will really start to regret that you rented (or bought) this movie. Thankfully, it does get better after that, but not much. Even after the first half hour, though, the movie does suffer from it's moments of inability to suspend disbelief. Probably the worst of this, aside from the first 30 minutes, is the end, when Mark Wahlberg's character simply abandons his hair metal band, and next thing we know he's playing 'sensitive' music in an early-90s coffehouse in Seattle and wearing flannel and sweaters.
The mere fact that, historically, grunge was a reaction AGAINST 80's hair metal makes this ending completely laughable. Personally, I was hoping that Jennifer Aniston's character leaving for Seattle halfway through the movie was a foreshadowing of an ending that would've been much more entertaining: Her character joining the late 80's Seattle grunge scene, and then at the end of the movie (presumably circa 1991) during the 'grunge explosion', she becomes rich and famous and Mark Wahlberg ends up crawling back as nothing but a broken has-been. :)