Wilson is not Will Ferrell

Rating: 5/10 (20 August 2008)

Late August used to be a dumping ground for crappy movies, but now look at how "The 40 Year Old Virgin" has changed all that. The "sleeper hit" genre has become a key part of August, so much so that it's hard to tell the difference anymore. Take "The Rocker" for example, the first starring role for Rainn "Dwight" Wilson from "The Office", a seemingly crappy movie that is already bouncing around the title of "The Summers Sleeper hit." Now usually the "sleeper hit" genre has been attached to Judd Apatow-related flicks like "Virgin" and last summers "Superbad", and its really hard to picture Wilson in a lead role at all so this all seems like a pretty hefty claim, but the question remains, is "The Rocker" a crappy movie or is it a sleeper hit?
Wilson plays Fish, the drummer for up and coming 80's metal band Vesuvius. Just when the band is about to make it big, Fish is cut out of it, leading to 20 years of working dull, soul-crushing jobs while Vesuvius quickly becomes one of the biggest bands ever. Some salvation comes his way in the form of his nephew's High School band, A.D.D. The band has just lost its drummer to a High School prank and is in desperate need of a replacement, leaving them with no one else to turn to except Fish. The band, which includes nephew Matt (Josh Gad), brooding lead singer Curtis (Teddy Geiger), and lone girl bassist Amelia (Emily Stone) is at first reluctant to accept the nearly forty year old drummer but in a plot twist that can only happen in movies, a Youtube video they make leads to big time fame. Soon A.D.D is playing the clubs and Fish is even romancing Curts' young mom (Christina Applegate). Just like all bands, they are not without their conflicts.
Wilson comes from the Will Ferrell school of comedy, in that he goes for cheap and sophomoric material. The movie relies on vomit, sweating, Wilsons flabby body jiggling in the wind, and when all else fails, him getting hit with something or a pratfall. Sure the shock value from these things is worth a chuckle sometimes but he doesn't have the same sort of buffoonish innocence that Ferrell does and a lot of what makes this kind of material hilarious is the sort of personality doing the delivery. Wilson doesn't seem to have it and so a lot of the jokes just look like what they are, cheap and sophomoric. And the story doesn't help either. It follows "School of Rock's" storyline pretty closely of build a band, learn life lessons, encounter a problem, and finally rock out in front of a huge crowd. Just "Rock" had an infectious enthusiasm for music as well as a sweet side but this is more a generic retread of most stories about the successes and perils of starting a band. No real surprises here.
The cast does OK. I'm not saying Wilson is a bad comic actor but this material doesn't seem suited for him at all. All the 80's headbands and weird outfits can't disguise the fact that he's better playing a much weirder character like Dwight from "The Office". Christina Applegate seems to light up any film she's in and I wish she was given more screen time here. Emma Stone, Josh Gadd, and Teddy Geiger each get do their best in throwaway roles as musicians dealing with teenage angst. Will Arnett and Fred Armisen are both pretty funny as Fish's old band mates and Jeff Garlin and Jane Lynch are pretty much wasted in unfunny roles. There is one person who makes out like a bandit in this movie though and that is Jason Sudeikis as the A.D.D's asshole manager. Known to me only for a recurring role on "30 Rock", he gets the best lines and when he gets them he knocks them out of the park.
"The Rocker" itself just doesn't rock though. It just felt too cheap and sophomoric, too conventional, too much of a waste of talented actors, and above all, a completely wrong type of vehicle for Rainn Wilson.