Paperaxle Reviews "Rock of Ages"

On Memorial Day, my wife and were standing on top of the Empire State Building in New York City (true story! Pictures on Facebook!), trying to decide what to do next. She suggested a Broadway show, specifically "Rock of Ages", so we took the elevator 86 floors down to the street, walked down to the theater to get tickets, and since it was a holiday and most theaters were "dark"... the show was closed for that day. (But across the street was "Phantom of the Opera" , which was open, so it wasn't a total loss...)

 

As fate would have it, I was able to catch an advance screening of this movie earlier this week, so for those of you who have/want tickets to see this at a screening next week, or for the more fortunate who can wait a while (a loong while!), here's what you can expect from the movie...

The movie takes place in 1987 on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. Coincidentally, I was working in Los Angeles during most of that year, and spent quite a bit of time on the Sunset Strip (mainly at Mel's Drive-In, which was the location used for the movie "American Graffiti"), just up the road from the Tower Records location (which closed in 2006) and the Chateau Marmont (used in the movie as Tom Cruise/Stacee Jaxx' hotel room, and where John Belushi fatally learned in 1982 that "speedball" was not a sport). But I digress...

 

Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) is riding a bus from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Hollywood in hopes to make it as a singer. After a big round of "Sister Christian" (Night Ranger - 1984) sung by everyone on the bus, she makes it to Hollywood, where her suitcase full of vinyl records is stolen (and how can anyone lift a suitcase full of records? According to FAA regulations, you would need a bank loan just to pay to get that thing on an airplane!). Fortunately, Drew Boley (Diego Boneta), a bartender who works at a nearby nightclub "The Bourbon Room" has seen the incident, and offers Sherrie a job working in the bar working as a waitress.

Meanwhile, The Bourbon Room is under attack by a group of women who want to shut down the bar. Led by Mayor Whitmore's wife, Patricia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the bar is a hotspot of evil rock and roll music, which is corrupting the youth along the Sunset Strip. (And how come, since these women are against rockinroll - it's pronounced as one word in this movie... do they have to sing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" - Pat Benatar - 1989! - to make their point? Isn't that defeating the purpose?) 

The only way to save The Bourbon Room, run by Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin) and Lonny Barnett (Russell Brand) is to get Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) to perform, to raise the needed money to keep the bar from being demolished. As luck would have it, Stacee is without an opening act, and Drew is called upon to perform, which he does by singing "I Wanna Rock" (Twisted Sister - 1984). Ultimately, Stacee's performance can't save the Room, because Stacee's manager, Paul Gill (Paul Giamiatti) has worked the contract in such a way that, although the concert is a success, the Room now owes them $6 dollars!

 

Other stuff happens in the first hour. Stacee is interviewed by Constance Sack (Malin Akerman), a reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, who later publishes a not so nice article about him. Drew and Sherri fall in love at the Tower Records store. (And I don't remember this particular Tower Records store being this heavy in dealing with vinyl records in 1987... I remember them mostly dealing with the new way to listen to music at that time... which were as compact disc. And record albums wrapped in plastic and selling for $9.44? I remember buying them at $12.95 that year, when I could find them!)

 

But after the first hour, the novelty wore off, and I was looking for an ending to this movie. And that's about the time that Dennis and Lonny have their big love scene, set to "Can't Fight This Feeling" (REO Speedwagon - 1984). This is the point where I said to my wife "I'm going home to feed our pet turtle. But first I need to stop by Petsmart to buy one to feed. See you later!", but I was forced to stay. You guys watching this movie... when you hear this song... make an excuse to leave... and don't say I didn't warn you!

So, to make a long story short, Gill wants to sign Drew to be in a new boy band (ZZ-GuyEE - double the Z, double the E, double the flavor), which I guess predates the year when boy bands were actually popular (Backstreet Boys - 1993?). Drew and Sherri have a major break-up, Sherri goes to work for the "Venus Club" (for Gentlemen), the boy band is a failure, Hulk beats up Loki, and agents J and K save the world from being blown up by aliens. (You don't think I'm gonna tell you how it's ends? C'mon... I had to watch the whole thing! You don't get off that easy!)

Don't get me wrong... there are some funny parts to this movie, but overall... it's got a lot of campy humor to it. Sort of like a Batman TV show marathon, with music. It's a bit over the top for me, because a little can go a long way, and in this case, a lot went a short way. But the movie also wears on you. Too much singing and dancing. I remember when I was working in LA back then... not once did I come to the office and have co-workers sing and dance to "Working for the Weekend" (Loverboy -1981). And of all the bars I used to hit in LA... not one of them was like The Bourbon Room. I remember bars being more like Teknopop and Herbie Hancock ("Rockit" - 1983) instead of the big hair band music. And what's the point of setting this in a specific year? Only two of the twenty-four songs were even released in 1987!

Overall, I'd give this movie three signal bars on a disposable cell phone, and that's only because of the novelty and some of the humor. Tom Cruise did a great job as Stacee (although I could have lived my entire life without seeing him in a thong), and Julianne Hough was memorable as Sherrie. Both Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand started out pretty good, and then got embarrassing as the movie went on. 

And another thing... women are being used in the movie way too much as human Q-Tips... Tom Cruise must have the cleanest ears in Hollywood...

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Fifty Shades of Grey

Have you been looking for your inner goddess and can't seem to find her? Well don't turn to EL James' hit book Fifty Shades of Grey for any satisfaction whatsoever. My book club chose to follow the craze and read this book like every other woman in America right now. Of the five of us not a single person liked it. It was THAT bad!

If you've been living under a rock (or just avoid magazines, newspapers, MSN homepages, television, and the like) you may not know what book I'm reviewing. The first of a trilogy (yep, there are two more in this series!), EL James writes of a young coed named Anastasia Steele. She is not only young but also naïve, silly, and downright annoying. She meets a slightly older man named Christian Grey who is rich, good-looking, and more controlling and abusive than Stanley was to Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire. I don't get the attraction but somehow Christian casts his spell on Anastasia and before she knows it, she has signed a nondisclosure agreement to have really weird sex with a man who is hiding his past. The most unfortunate thing about this story is that it goes nowhere. Seriously, nothing happens in this book. Ana shares the very odd details of losing her virginity and tragically uses phrases like “holy cow” and “inner goddess” as if she is in junior high school. Ugh.

I cannot defend this book in any way and I certainly recommend avoiding the temptation to read what everyone else is reading. It's not kinky, sexy, erotic...it's just plain bad writing about two twenty-somethings who contribute to an abusive relationship. Not exactly good times. On that note, avoid the bandwagon and skip this book. You'll thank me later.

Happy reading! ~Cherry

Paperaxle Review: "John Carter"

Take two scoops of “Buck Rogers”, a half cup of “Cowboys and Aliens”, a dash of early Superman (strange visitor from another planet who initially couldn’t fly, but could leap an eighth of a mile), a pinch of Conan and a smidgen of “Where the Wild Things Are”, mix well and you get the recipe for the new movie “John Carter”.

I was initially hoping it was about what happens to the doctor played by Noah Wyle in the television series “ER”, because during the last year or two of that program, that was the only character that I even liked. But it’s not that John Carter. No… this John Carter is a Civil War veteran who in 1881 discovers a mysterious “cave of gold” in the Arizona Territory which somehow transports him to the planet Mars (also known as “Barsoom”, which sounds like a bad cartoon sound effect used in Mad Magazine to describe an explosion).

Once on Barsoom/Mars, Carter (played by Taylor Kitsch) finds he has “superpowers” due to the lighter gravity of the planet. His strength has increased ten-fold and can now leap over tall buildings in a single bound. In a nutshell, the entire plot consists of one band of warriors pitted against another band of warriors, with our boy Johnny caught in the middle, and all he wants to do is get back home to Earth. To describe much more of the story would be beyond my capabilities, because I started getting lost a little bit in keeping the details straight.

During his adventures, Carter meets (and falls in love with) the princess of Helium, Dejah Thoris (played by Lynn Collins) and even adopts a “dog” named Woola, who provides the comic relief in this movie. There are several well placed “easter eggs” in this movie, most notably that of the character Edgar Rice Burroughs (who in real life, actually created John Carter of Mars, as well as Tarzan of the Apes).

The screenplay (by the director Andrew Stanton, as well as Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book of 2000 “The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay”) is very well written, with moments of true humor and thrilling action. Any fault I find with this 132 minute movie is due to a minor flare up of my “wince-o-meter” which went into overdrive during the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. Things wrapped up a little too quickly, with a few unexplained questions that weren’t addressed. It was like the screenwriters didn’t know if they should have a sequel or not, so they covered their bets.

The movie is in 3-D, which it didn’t need to be, and is rated PG-13, probably for some violence and gore. I’d give this one three “Barsooms”… it’s enjoyable with great special effects and the story is good enough to want to see more of the characters. I’d even go a little bit higher if the ending wasn’t so rushed.