Now that it’s August it means that the rock musical Rock Of Ages has been out six weeks having premiered June 15. It seemed to have disappeared from the theaters in a wink. I thought I wanted to go see it having been a part of the Hollywood Rock & Roll scene of the 80s (actually, more of the Downtown New Wave scene) but I changed my mind after absolutely no one would go with me and I saw the trailer.
Rock of Ages topped out at $15.1 million to place third in its opening weekend and the domestic total as of July 30, 2012 was $38,310,862. In other words it bombed fast and hard. What’s surprising is that it tanked with really pretty good reviews.
L.A. Times: A triumph of genial impudence over good sense and better taste, "Rock of Ages" is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.
CNN: Tom Cruise should have been a rock star.
Tom Cruise seemed an unlikely choice to play a rock star but he received surprisingly good reviews and the guy’s not exactly box office poison anyway. Remember, this movie bombed before the tabloids started reporting on his divorce, current divorce. Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin and Catherine Zeta-Jones are reasonably popular and Sunset Strip Hairspray Metal music is enjoying a resurgence with the stage musical on which the movie was based being a hit so what was the problem?
There has been a divide in this country since the very birth of rock and roll in the 1950s and people either LOVE it or they HATE it. Those who hate it are not going to see a movie that in anyway is about it even if they normally like musical theater, they’ll boycott anything to do with rock and roll. This movie just wasn’t made for them, it was created hoping to attract the Hard Rock music crowd. The problem is that although the movie is about the Hard Rock music scene of the Eighties and features hit songs from the era, the songs were not performed by actual rock bands but performed in a musical theater style. The movie trailer I saw that turned me off from seeing the film had Catherine Zeta-Jones singing a Pat Benatar song. I like Catherine Zeta-Jones but she’s no Pat Benatar when it comes to singing 80’s hard rock.
Rock fans take their music very, very seriously and are repelled by anything that seems exploitive or worse, that seems to ridicule their idols or the music. Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story is a great film and a personal favorite of mine yet it bombed so bad the L.A. Times actually wrote a cover story about how a movie so good could have tanked so completely.
At this point I don’t think rock fans will ever develop a sense of humor about their music and the people who still think it’s the Devil’s music don’t have a sense of humor anyway so it’s no surprise to me that Rock Of Ages bombed as it did. I’ll catch it on cable, when I’m home alone.
Rock of Ages topped out at $15.1 million to place third in its opening weekend and the domestic total as of July 30, 2012 was $38,310,862. In other words it bombed fast and hard. What’s surprising is that it tanked with really pretty good reviews.
L.A. Times: A triumph of genial impudence over good sense and better taste, "Rock of Ages" is the guiltiest of guilty pleasures.
CNN: Tom Cruise should have been a rock star.
Tom Cruise seemed an unlikely choice to play a rock star but he received surprisingly good reviews and the guy’s not exactly box office poison anyway. Remember, this movie bombed before the tabloids started reporting on his divorce, current divorce. Russell Brand, Alec Baldwin and Catherine Zeta-Jones are reasonably popular and Sunset Strip Hairspray Metal music is enjoying a resurgence with the stage musical on which the movie was based being a hit so what was the problem?
There has been a divide in this country since the very birth of rock and roll in the 1950s and people either LOVE it or they HATE it. Those who hate it are not going to see a movie that in anyway is about it even if they normally like musical theater, they’ll boycott anything to do with rock and roll. This movie just wasn’t made for them, it was created hoping to attract the Hard Rock music crowd. The problem is that although the movie is about the Hard Rock music scene of the Eighties and features hit songs from the era, the songs were not performed by actual rock bands but performed in a musical theater style. The movie trailer I saw that turned me off from seeing the film had Catherine Zeta-Jones singing a Pat Benatar song. I like Catherine Zeta-Jones but she’s no Pat Benatar when it comes to singing 80’s hard rock.
Rock fans take their music very, very seriously and are repelled by anything that seems exploitive or worse, that seems to ridicule their idols or the music. Walk Hard, The Dewey Cox Story is a great film and a personal favorite of mine yet it bombed so bad the L.A. Times actually wrote a cover story about how a movie so good could have tanked so completely.
At this point I don’t think rock fans will ever develop a sense of humor about their music and the people who still think it’s the Devil’s music don’t have a sense of humor anyway so it’s no surprise to me that Rock Of Ages bombed as it did. I’ll catch it on cable, when I’m home alone.
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