Movie Review: “The Rocker”
Josh Gad, Teddy Geiger, Emma Stone and Rainn Wilson in “The Rocker.”
Rating: 57
“The Rocker” is an amiable music-business satire that rises and falls entirely on the appeal of Rainn Wilson, clocking out of “The Office” long enough to pound the skins as a past-his-prime drummer who finds an unlikely second shot at the spotlight.
Robert “Fish” Fishman (Wilson) nearly found fame in the late ‘80s, when he was the drummer for the pop-metal band Vesuvius, but got kicked out just as the group was ready for its close-up. He spent the next two decades working customer-service jobs while his old bandmates became Bon Jovi-level superstars.
A run-in with a co-worker causes Fish to lose his latest job, and he winds up living in his sister’s attic, where he overhears that the band his socially inept nephew Matt (Josh Gad) plays keyboards in needs a drummer. Fish quickly regains his taste for rocking, but his hair-metal flamboyance hardly meshes with the moody, “emo” sensibilities of Matt’s bandmates, Curtis (singer-songwriter Teddy Geiger) and Amelia (Emma Stone).
“The Rocker” fits dead-center in director Peter Cattaneo’s wheelhouse: the film’s theme of finding vindication through performance is not far removed from “The Full Monty” or “Lucky Break.” But unlike “Monty,” “The Rocker” is mostly a one-man show, hinging entirely on Wilson’s capacity for over-the-top dork moves and Will Ferrell-style nude gross-out humor.
But Wilson also delivers a nicely empathetic performance as Fish, a man confronted daily with his lost dreams. It’s hard not to feel his middle-aged pain as Fish faces a life of daily grinds when all he wanted to do was rock. “The Rocker” also taps into an all-too-real generational truth: pop culture has the shelf-life of bread, and the next batch of teenagers will relate to the last wave of rock ‘n’ roll about as well as they will to medieval minstrels.
It’s unfortunate that “The Rocker” lacks many fleshed-out characters beyond Fish — Geiger and Stone are appealing actors but hardly move beyond archetypes as Curtis and Amelia. And while our YouTube-infused world is referenced in “The Rocker,” it seems unlikely that at least two ruses committed by Vesuvius (featuring Will Arnett, Bradley Cooper and Fred Armisen) would not be caught early and often in this fully monitored culture.
But “The Rocker” is not designed to be anything beyond what it is: transient fun for the musically inclined. When taken at that level, it stays on rhythm and only misses a few beats.
— George Lang
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
This Film is soo coooll!!! Love it!!