Five Reasons Rock of Ages Is Even Worse Than You Think

Photo by David James

Nothin' like a good time.

Rock of Ages, the musical about Hollywood dreams coming true in the context of '80s songs that you only hear when frat bros play them on the jukebox at Lost Weekend, opens in theaters tomorrow today. Because it was filmed down here in Miami, we've been tracking it for about a year. But that doesn't mean we were happy about it.

So our expectations were tempered when we finally got to see the end product -- the thing we've been writing about since what feels like 1987, which incidentally is the year the movie is set. Not being "Gleeks" or "Gleeniacs" or whatever Glee fans are calling themselves these days, we knew we weren't exactly the target audience for this film. We figured it would probably suck. But we were wrong.

Rock of Ages would not merely suck. This would not be a movie you can just stroll away from, saying, "Huh, so that was pretty bad," then move on with your life. Oh no. It gets inside you, this movie. Using music to which you know all the lyrics whether you like it or not, Rock of Ages presses up against your eardrums until you relent, letting it crawl deep inside your psyche, where it proceeds to torture you relentlessly with its soul-crushingly vapid acting, brain-liquifyingly boring characters, and shockingly, recklessly socially irresponsible plot -- all as Night Ranger's "Sister Christian" plays in the background.

It's not just another shitty movie. It's a cinematic apocalypse. Here's why.

Photo by David James

It's Such a Musical
Even for fans of musical theater, Rock of Ages is a little too "musical-y." Our screening audience was so uncomfortable during the opening musical number, during which a bunch of shady characters abruptly turn and start singing to Julianne Hough on a bus with no context whatsoever, that we could hear people shifting in their seats and chuckling under their breath. And this wasn't some hoity-toity screening for filim snobs; our show was open to the public and included an open bar and an '80s costume contest. It's not like this wasn't the target audience. This was too much and not enough, all at once, right out of the gate. Motorin'!

Photo by David James

Location Confusion
If you're not from South Florida, Rock of Ages' sets probably just look like a Britto-tinted version of the Sunset Strip. But if you've been to Revolution, where the scenes inside the film's central location the Bourbon Room were filmed, or drove down the downtown stretch of N. Miami Ave. that served as the exterior of the Bourbon Room, you're going to have a problem. That's because every time a character inside the Bourbon Room walks outside, they're traveling from Ft. Lauderdale to downtown Miami in a single step. Not in the world of the film, of course -- but that world is so shoddily constructed, looking like the Sunset Strip as recreated by Disney's Imagineers, that it's hard to forget you're looking at your own backyard.