50% dreadful, 50% hideous
Tom Cruise photo from W. On one hand he overdoes everything; on the other hand he’s never lazy.
Rock of Ages is so awful we could not get up and leave the theatre even as the movie went from cheesy to putrid. It was as if we had been glued to the leatherette with the cold sweat and half-dried vomit of the people from the previous screenings.
And yet we would pay 100% of the ticket price to watch a movie about Guns N’ Roses starring Tom Cruise as Axl Rose and Johnny Depp as Slash. As long as Cruise’s singing is dubbed. Please, cats can sing Paradise City better than that.
Reactions from the audience, of which we comprised 3/7ths.
On the girl ingenue singing Sister Christian
– Nothing beats crazy Alfred Molina singing that while his Asian boy sets off firecrackers in Boogie Nights.
On Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand singing anything
– Alec Baldwin looks embarrassed.
– I’m embarrassed for him.
– Does Russell Brand have other settings besides “Irritating”?
On the boy ingenue
– He looks like John Schneider from The Dukes of Hazzard.
– With the hair of the other guy from The Dukes of Hazzard.
– Aha! He is the spawn of the two guys from The Dukes of Hazzard.
On Bryan Cranston and Catherine Zeta Jones being in the movie
– Aaaaaaa it’s Walter White from Breaking Bad!
– What possessed him to take this role?
– Maybe they expected Mamma Mia-type grosses?
– This movie makes Mamma Mia look brilliant.
– Wait, if Zeta Jones’s character hates rock why is she singing Pat Benatar?
On Mary J. Blige suddenly showing up
Everybody: Mary, what the hell are you doing in this movie!!!
On Tom Cruise and Hey Man
– Contrast in acting styles, the baboon is so relaxed.
On Tom Cruise singing Pour Some Sugar On Me
– Aha Tom revisiting scene of early triumph: dancing to Bob Seger in his underwear.
– That has to be Tom Cruise himself because why would you get dubbed to sound terrible?
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
June 18th, 2012 at 08:03
Wreck of Ages. Echos!
June 18th, 2012 at 09:24
that pic — tom cruise — trying hard.
June 18th, 2012 at 18:41
@cheezmiss: All of Tom Cruise’s promo photos from Rock of Ages are so full of TH that they’re practically hilarious.
If Tom Cruise shows up as Axl Rose circa the “release” of Chinese Democracy – complete with full-body bloat and cheesy blond braids – I would line up for that movie on opening weekend.
June 19th, 2012 at 00:07
Awww, how sad. The Broadway was hilarious, and the opposite of “trying hard.” I blame Tom Cruise. And Adam Shankmann.
June 19th, 2012 at 09:27
So I take it they did the right thing by not casting Tom Cruise in “The Vampire Lestat” slash “The Queen of the Damned” wherein he would have been required to be a rock star…
June 19th, 2012 at 11:37
Whenever we think of Stephenie Meyer we want to give Anne Rice the Nobel Prize.
With the right writer and director (and someone to do the actual singing) Tom Cruise could play a rock star. No one could know that insane lifestyle better than he does.
Have you noticed how much singing Cruise has done in his movies? Jerry Maguire, Top Gun, Magnolia…
We’ve always maintained that with his dead eyes and demented intensity, Cruise is brilliant at playing assholes.
June 19th, 2012 at 20:24
Magnolia! Tom Cruise really sold that movie for me. I had to watch it in the theater for a film class, and I couldn’t help but watch that look on his face while he was singing “Wise Up.”
Too bad he didn’t get an award for that role… though I do remember rumors of some kind of legal action against a DJ who made a dance remix of the “Respect The Cock” speech.
(Also for good measure, Tom’s dance numbers in “Tropic Thunder” were also hilarious.)
June 19th, 2012 at 22:34
saw the director of RockofAges being interviewed on tv — he was describing how he met Tom Cruise in a party & Tom Cruise asked him `when are we going to make that musical?’
the director said his 1st thoughts were `never! what musical? you want to play Captain Von Trapp?’ or something like that.
after that, he said Tom Cruise was “great” in his movie.
June 20th, 2012 at 08:05
“Whenever we think of Stephenie Meyer we want to give Anne Rice the Nobel Prize.”
Mwahahaha. And I do so love Anne Rice.
Now that you point it out, yeah – Tom does quite an amount of singing, doesn’t he? And in light of “Interview with the Vampire” (where I must say he did a great job since the Lestat in IWTV was a dead-eyed, demented asshole), maybe they should have given him the Lestat job later on (assuming the Aaliyah sequel was actually good, which it was not). Korn’s lead did the singing voice of Lestat there, so maybe they should’ve rethought that movie.
Going back to non-Rice Tom Cruise, I wasn’t able to watch “Tropic Thunder.” Should I?
June 20th, 2012 at 16:24
Yes, for Robert Downey Jr’s pitch-perfect impression of Russell Crowe being an asshole.