Movie Review: The Rocker

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2008)

To the roughly seven-eights of college student populations who have pummeled "That's what she said" deeper into the ground than "Show me the money," Rainn Wilson will always be known as the legendary Dwight K. Schrute: bear expert, beet connoisseur and all-around American badass.
But with the once cultish popularity of "The Office" recently exploding, it was only a matter of time before Dunder-Mifflin's resident purple belt headlined his own feature.
Unfortunately, we're stuck with "The Rocker," and to say that it's Wilson's ticket to superstardom is more than a little rash. Sure, the movie's sometimes funny, clever and entertaining, but it's like paying $10 for half of a cheese sandwich. Blandness and predictability just doesn't cut it these days, and what we get is much more middling and disappointing than outright bad.
Back in the 80's, Robert "Fish" Fishman (Wilson) was the original drummer for Vesuvius, an up-and-coming Cleveland-area hair metal band inches away from making it big. But on the night the group signed a huge recording contract, Fish's mates decided to dump him. Twenty years later, Vesuvius has become an immortal rock legend, while Fish works at a call center, twitching at every reference to the group that tossed him.
Fortunately for Fish, his nephew Matt's (Josh Gad) high school garage band, ADD, has a sudden opening on drums. As a last resort, the angst-ridden singer-songwriter Curtis (musician Teddy Geiger) and sad-sack guitarist Amelia (Emma Stone) approach the bitter, middle-aged man to play with them at prom. The gig is ultimately a disaster, thanks to Fish's unrestrained showboating, but a freak video of him drumming naked is leaked onto YouTube and becomes hugely popular. Suddenly, ADD is touring all over Ohio. Fish has been given a chance at redemption, but will he ever let go of his past? Ultimately, anyone who's ever seen more than two movies in their lifetime knows exactly where this story is going, especially after "The School of Rock" did it infinitely better a few years ago. The script is so by-the-numbers that you struggle to count the clichéd situations and plot twists on one hand. It's easy to see that director Peter Cattaneo's film is aimed towards teens, but it often appears as if he's pandering to younger, more easily satisfied audience members. The music symbolizes this perfectly: instead of the rock the title promises, we're treated to multiple performances of bland, instantly forgettable Disney tweener pop.
It wasn't a good sign that the early scenes with Vesuvius made me wish this movie would be about them instead, "This is Spinal Tap" style. Will Arnett, Bradley Cooper and Fred Armisen are all hilarious in cameo roles as the band members, and a "Terminator 2"-like car chase involving them and a dissed Fish is one of the film's highlights.
There are actually several stretches of really inspired, funny stuff in "The Rocker," like Fish's habit of puking in his pocket before a show for good luck, a hilariously wrong reference to John Lennon's corpse and Vesuvius's band members suddenly becoming British. But the film is quick to revert back to its bland story, obvious slapstick or one of 27 shots of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame once something really humorous happens.
Wilson's not badhe elevates whatever material he can, but Cattaneo isn't completely successful in channeling his unique brand of humor. Instead, he's somewhat squandered, coming off like a manic fusion of Jack Black and Will Ferrell. His goofy faces in the middle of an intense drumming performance are hilarious, though. Stone is really good as Amelia, if not quite as charming as she was in "Superbad." Christina Applegate is completely wasted as Curtis's mom, and exists solely to provide Fish with a lame, boring romantic subplot with zero chemistry. Jason Sudeikis from "SNL" is the most consistently funny as a sleazy record producer, but even he gets to be a bit too much in the end.
"The Rocker" isn't terrible by any means; it's just there for audiences to laugh their 10 laughs and forget about it 20 minutes after leaving the theater. Catch another movie you might have missed this summer instead, and save this one for DVD.
** out of ****