Releases for July 6, 2012 

Rock of Ages

By John Muldering, Catholic News Service

Shameless sentimentality and cheerful, consequence-free debauchery make for an unsettling mix in the heavy-metal musical romance “Rock of Ages” (Warner Bros.).

Director Adam Shankman’s screen version of Chris D’Arienzo’s hit Broadway paean to the glories of Reagan-era rock – set in 1987 and penned by D’Arienzo in collaboration with Justin Theroux and Allan Loeb – at least has the good sense never to take itself too seriously.

Such lighthearted self-deprecation may help to redeem the picture’s glaring aesthetic defects – an obvious plot arc and stick-figure characters prominent among them. But it does nothing to mitigate the skewed sexual morality or faith-averse attitude implicit in the story.

Julianne Hough and Diego Boneta star in a scene from the movie "Rock of Ages."

The point of it all, it seems, is to string together big-hair band standards that some viewers, at least, will remember with warm nostalgia, while also embodying some of their lyrics. A case in point of the latter motif: our heroine, Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough).

She’s an aspiring singer whose opening-scene cultural hegira from the Midwest to Los Angeles (city of her dreams, natch) makes her the embodiment of the “small-town girl” celebrated by Journey in their power ballad, “Don’t Stop Believin’.”

The first person Sherrie encounters in Tinsel Town mugs her. The second – literally – comes to the now-distressed newcomer’s rescue by getting her a job as a waitress at the Bourbon Room, the legendary headbangers’ nightclub where he toils as a junior bartender. This good-hearted Angelino (born and raised in South Detroit) is one Drew Boley (Diego Boneta), a lad with show biz ambitions of his own.

As the Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney of the Def Leppard set fall for each other – and, as we’re shown, albeit briefly and nongraphically, tumble joyously into bed together – plot complications unfold around them.

Dennis Dupree (Alec Baldwin), the Bourbon Room’s happy-go-lucky owner, is struggling to keep the place open. His chances of doing so largely depend on a headlining appearance by debauched megastar Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise). But Jaxx, who travels with cases of Jack Daniels, an aggressive pet monkey and a stable of scantily clad groupies, has an increasingly distant relationship with reality, a fact that’s being exploited by his unscrupulous manager Paul Gill (Paul Giamatti).

Another worry for Dupree comes in the person of Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the puritanical wife of La-La Land’s crusading right-wing mayor. She’s determined to clean up the Sunset Strip, beginning with the Bourbon Room, so she leads daily sign-waving protests outside Dupree’s doors.

The notion of a red state-style pressure group successfully manipulating the electorate of Los Angeles is, of course, absurd. So too is the sight of Whitmore and her uptight, exclusively female followers stomping their way through Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” sung to a portrait of Jaxx.

They do this routine, however, in the setting of a church that is unmistakably Catholic (Jaxx’s image is, inexplicably, propped up on the altar), while two of the figures at the barricades with Whitmore are traditionally dressed nuns. So no amount of campy ridiculousness can disguise the underlying message: As the hidden behaviour of Whitmore and her husband eventually make clear, religiously motivated moral conservatives are all repressed hypocrites.

Those on the other side of debate are, to say the least, more relaxed. Our first sight of Jaxx has him in bed, gradually emerging from the pile of female bodies under which he has spent the night. And, when two male characters proclaim their love for each other – cue REO Speedwagon’s “Can’t Fight This Feeling” – and eventually kiss, audiences are meant to laugh, but also to nod approval.

The film contains a negative treatment of religion, misguided values – including a frivolous view of homosexuality, acceptance of premarital sex and a comic portrayal of aberrant sexual behaviour – rear and partial nudity, a couple of uses of profanity, and some crude and crass language. (Morally offensive). 

The Dictator

By Adam Shaw, Catholic News Service

Given the graphically scatological and sexually degrading humor comedian Sacha Baron Cohen showcased in his two previous feature films – 2006’s “Borat! Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” and 2009’s more manageably titled “Bruno” – it would seem a tad unrealistic to hope that his latest picture, “The Dictator” (Paramount), might avoid an unwholesome hat trick.

Sacha Baron Cohen and Ben Kingsley star in a scene from the movie "The Dictator."

As it turns out, such reckless optimism would indeed be misplaced. A shift from the hidden-camera, ambush-style satire that characterised Cohen’s earlier efforts to a more traditional scripted offering does nothing to prevent his signature antics feeling tedious and recycled. Nor, for that matter, does the change in format involve any corralling of their waywardness.

This time around, Cohen plays Adm. Gen. Aladeen, a composite, but Moammar Gadhafi-like tyrant from the fictional North African nation of Wadiya. After his scheming uncle (Ben Kingsley) uses Aladeen’s state visit to the United Nations as the opportunity to stage a coup, replacing the outrageously bearded goof with a more pliable imposter, the true leader finds himself wandering the streets of Manhattan, whiskerless and penniless.

Taking an alternate identity, he befriends hippy-dippy vegan collective grocer Zoey (Anna Faris), muddles his way into a job at her food store, and plots to retake his title.

Although the premise is workable, and the relationship between the tyrant and the free spirit provides some touching and genuinely funny moments, the rest of director Larry Charles’ comedic portrait amounts to little more than a mix of foul language and gross-out sludge, a combination that produces more winces than laughs.

So, what witty and whimsical jibes await lucky moviegoers? Besides the blatantly sexist and racist jokes, there are gags playing on such ripe-for-comedy subjects as rape, pedophilia, prostitution, AIDS, abortion, necrophilia, suicide and homosexuality. And that’s not to mention the scene devoted to masturbation in which the kidding around pauses long enough for the practice to be explicitly – and straight facedly – promoted as “healthy.”

Curiously, the proceedings culminate with a finger-wagging lecture about the shortcomings of American democracy. This last-gasp aspiration to satiric seriousness, however, falls just as flat as all the puerile cavorting that preceded it.

The film contains occasional violence, strong sexual content including pervasive sexual humor, fleeting full nudity, a same-sex kiss and an explicit endorsement of aberrant acts as well as frequent rough and crude language. (Morally offensive).