Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock
Titolo: It's Only Roch'n'roll....

SUNDAY JANUARY 13 2002
Film: Only rock'n'roll but I like it
So you wanna be a Rock Star? Then don't miss this great fairy tale of
leather-clad excess, says Cosmo Landesman
Three stars Outstanding Two stars Good One star So-so No star Give it a miss
Who, during the dark days of Black Sabbath and Kiss, would have imagined
there would come a time when we would look back on bands with big hair,
imperious lunchboxes, platform boots and demonic tongues with a kind of
affection, or even nostalgia? Heavy metal was considered the lowest form of
music known to popkind. It offered, so the theory went, escapism and
empowerment to the spotty retards of the Anglo-American proletariat. But
now-adays, AC/DC's Highway to Hell is considered a classic, and people boast
of having once loved Deep Purple.
This rehabilitation of metal really began with Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal
Tap. Through his lens, these sexist dinosaurs of the 1970s suddenly seemed
sweet and loveable. This is the starting point of the director Stephen Herek
's Rock Star. But his rags-to-riffs-to-riches (and then to ruin) love story
is a cautionary tale about fame, and a fable about finding your own voice -
though one that doesn't take itself too seriously.
We are in Pittsburgh in the 1980s, and our hero is a wannabe rock star,
Chris Cole (Mark Wahlberg). He lives at home with his loving parents, and by
day is a Xerox repair man. By night, he's the lead singer of Blood
Pollution, a tribute band who cover the songs of heavy-metal heroes Steel
Dragon. Chris is an interesting example of an expanding breed of wannabes:
people who have a talent for imitating the talent of other people. Chris has
devoted his life to becoming a carbon copy, from his eyeliner to his
leathers, of Steel Dragon's lead singer, Bobby Beers (Jason Flemyng).
But for defying that great modern-American demand that you must be yourself,
Chris is considered a freak. "What's so sick about you," says his brother,
Joe, over the breakfast table, "is that you haven't even got a fantasy of
your own." Chris demands that every guitar squeal, leather lapel and lick of
eyeliner look and sound exactly like Steel Dragon's. Even his fellow band
members think that he takes the whole Dragon thing "a bit too seriously".
Fortunately, Herek and his screenwriter, John Stockwell, avoid the
temptation of making Chris another poor, star-struck schmo, the Rupert
Pupkin of rock. He's an obsessive, all right, and one who is too old to be
living at home, stealing his mother's make-up. But Herek and Stockwell make
him seem charming instead of a sad casualty of celebrity culture. It is
endearing the way he is constantly correcting people who call Blood
Pollution a "cover band". "No," he says, politely and proudly, "we're a
tribute band." And it's by taking us into that subculture of cover/ tribute
bands that Rock Star is so different. There is one great comic moment when
Chris and his band come across another Steel Dragon tribute group in a car
park, and Chris and the other lead singer engage in a fans' duel - firing
arcane band facts into each other's faces.
What is missing from Stockwell's screenplay is any kind of explanation for
Chris's reluctance to find his own voice. Is he scared of failure, or what?
This issue comes to a dramatic climax when one of the band wants them to
start doing their own material and says to Chris: "Wouldn't you rather fail
as yourself than succeed as some Bobby Beers clone?" Chris offers the
inadequate reply: "Why in the hell would I want to do that?" It is Chris's
uncompromising devotion to Steel Dragon that leads to his dismissal from
Blood Pollution. But in true fairy-tale style, Steel Dragon are at that
moment in the process of dumping Beers. Chris gets the miracle call asking
him to fly out to LA to audition for the job as Steel Dragon's new lead
singer. So off he goes, with supportive girlfriend/manager Emily (Jennifer
Aniston) by his side. Before you can say sniff the glove, he is a rock star
on stage, saying to the adoring crowd: "I was a regular guy who grew up with
posters of these guys on my wall ... so don't give up on your dreams."
The second half of the film is about Chris's disenchantment with that dream.
He and Emily are two sweet innocents abroad in rock'n'roll Babylon. They try
to embrace rock decadence like Doris Day and Rock Hudson at a wife-swapping
party. Soon, they are sucked into a sea of sleaze - and here, the wonderful
Timothy Spall oozes that special kind of nasally
fat-rock-bloke-with-backstage-passes kind of slime. So can the love between
Chris and Emily survive coke-fuelled nights of tongue-wrestling with
strangers? Herek avoids the sentimentality and dishonesty of Cameron Crowe's
Almost Famous. He has been accused of a kind of puritanism for showing us a
rock world of scuzzy groupies, drug excess and infantile men acting out
every hotel-trashing cliché in the book. But his point is that Chris is just
copying somebody else's way of life, the way he once copied somebody else's
vocal style. His crime is inauthenticity, rather than self-indulgence.
The problem with every film about a rock band since This Is Spinal Tap is
how to create original songs that seem good enough to pass for the real
thing. Like Almost Famous, Rock Star doesn't quite make the musical grade.
(You never hear those catchy riffs you get in the better metal bands.) But
thanks to Wahlberg and his screeching prowess, the film does capture the
spirit of metal.
There are still plenty of people who think Wahlberg - because of his
rap-music background - can't really act. Okay, he was seriously bad in
Planet of the Apes, but that was down to miscasting. He may have the dead
eyes of a shark, but he's got the sunny smile of the all-American innocent.
It's this juxtaposition of his decency and the depravity of the world around
him - as in Boogie Nights - that make him interesting to watch and Rock Star
so worth seeing. Two stars
Rock Star, 105 mins, 15
--
 
http://iamr.cjb.net/
 il rock a portata di click!
www.isoladelsole.co.uk
" Che schifo e che tristezza pensare che ci siano degli Italiani che si
masturbano col ritratto di Berlusconi e neanche se ne vergognano ".

Carino "It's Only Roch'n'roll". Potrebbe essere il titolo di un album di
cover di Rod Stewart.