Rainn Wilson is funny, but it can't elevate slight material

Rating: 5/10 (20 June 2009)

The Rocker is content to be in its place, and I was content that it was, more or less. Less because it could have been something very funny, maybe on a level of smart rocker comedy like School of Rock (there's probably been numerous comparisons, but it ends with it being about a 30-something rocker teaching the "kids" how to do it right), and would have perhaps peaked my interest to see it in the theater. But nothing from the trailers or the commercials made it appear to be much more than it looked: bland PG-13 stuff with some occasional prat-falls and Rainn Wilson used like a $10 hooker. As it turns out, expectations were met: it's perfectly suitable as a rental, but it shouldn't be something you feel sorry you missed. And, sadder still, it was the right choice to release it in one of those lesser release periods for movies: the ass-end of summer, so to speak.
Oh sure, Rainn Wilson tries, and is funny throughout the movie as "Fish", a once-drummer for Vesuvius, a heavy-metal bank that kicked him out so they could make it huge with a record company that insisted a family member replace him. After 20 years Fish's nephew comes to the now cranky old-school rocker and asks him to play the prom with his band, A.D.D. (not, not ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder- this brings a chuckle, but only one). It's a bust gig, but the idea of him as drummer sticks around, and soon it turns into, well, one of "those" rock and roll movies, where it's not about the music so much as it's about the sort of 'rise-and-fall' story we've seen often: big record deal spear-headed by a one-dimensional a-hole (Will Arnett) and lots of fame and glory, but then the downside of ego and, in this case, a confrontation Fish has to make with his past demons of a former band.
Wilson's sense of comic timing is impeccable, even when not a whole lot is going on. It's kind of sad seeing him try so hard, and sometime succeed, with material that either tries to be funny too much (again, physical or gross-out gags of the PG-13 variety) or not quite enough ('the naked drummer' good was amusing, but then the writers just left it behind without taking it a step further- a similar flop comparable to the much touted nudity scene in Forgetting Sarah Marhsall). Certain lines are memorable (" A lot of elevators play Celine Dion - that doesn't make it right"), and one or two scenes do stick out (the funniest without Wilson is by far Dimitri Martin's bit part as a pretentious music video maestro with a bolex), but, again, too many fall flat or are over-played or whatever. It's as if the filmmakers- and I include co-screenwriter Wallace Wolodarsky, usually a dependable writer from the Simpsons- were content in the knowledge that they were making at best an amusing B-movie and at worst forgettable fluff.
This is best evidenced in the fact that a) when there is music from A.D.D. it's middling pop stuff with maybe the one song "Not Bitter" being above average, and b) a misuse of a comic talent like Will Arnett, who seems to somehow suck the comic life out of any scene he's in - I can't tell whether it's his fault or the director for not letting him go off and improv or maybe not get enough, or maybe both, but either way he's in direct contrast with Wilson, who goes all out and is his usual fun Rainn Wilson self. The Rocker is what you've heard: not terrible, nothing great, a decent little Saturday afternoon potato-couch flick that will only remind you how you could be watching any given episode of the Office or Arrested Development instead.