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It was the same budget as "Hairspray," six years later with a shorter shooting schedule. Unfortunately there wasn’t nearly as much rehearsal as I’d like. I said, "Oh my gosh, I think this is the guy." I auditioned him, he came in six times for me. I’d be combing through auditions on a casting website, and one day, there he was. It was just like "Hairspray," with Nikki Blonsky. I said to Catherine Zeta-Jones: "Just play Eva Peron." It’s my little wink at the musicals.
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I said to Russell Brand: "You play a sweet, lovely sidekick to Alec Baldwin who then becomes his boyfriend. I told Alec Baldwin, "You play a club owner on the Sunset Strip, and you’ve been stoned for so long you didn’t realize you were gay." And he was in. And as soon as they heard Tom was doing it, basically anybody I asked said "Yes." Every day we wrapped, Tom would hug me and shake me and say, "I am having the best time, thank you." Tom Cruise did a scene where he was actually talking to the baboon - it’s not currently in the movie - and he had his face really, really close. If not, this is not your party.Those are canines on that baby. The true barometer of whether you’ll get any joy from this is whether or not you enjoy the idea of Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand singing 'Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore' at each other while twirling.
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As is Catherine Zeta-Jones stomping her way through 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot'. Tom Cruise (who belts commendably and highlights his gameness by entering the movie bedazzled crotch first) and Malin Akerman doing the magnificently maudlin 'I Wanna Know What Love Is' as a ballad to one night stands is a highlight.
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He’s helped by a cast who commit absolutely, either incapable of embarrassment or unaware they should be. In Hairspray he snuck the segregation story in quietly under the jaunty pop, and here he draws wit from songs written with none. But Adam Shankman has immense skill in elevating tackiness. Blige playing a woman whose sole characteristic is belting it out quite loudly when needed. And there are certainly times when it could have used judicious cutting – it’s a good 25-minutes too long and several roles are pointless, like Mary J. It would be very easy for this movie star karaoke session to fall apart after the first couple of hits, so little is there to hold it together. Bon Jovi spent years writing plots like this and resolving them in four minutes. Inevitably, strippers, motorbikes, whisky and The Man all figure before the big finish. A girl (Hough, adorable) arrives in 1980s Hollywood with double denim on her back and a few quarters in her purse a boy (Boneta, endearing) works a bar both dream of love and fame. In a way that’s either very smart or very lazy, the plot follows the same shallow arc as your typical rock anthem. It’s utterly ridiculous, a tequila shot of a movie: cheap and thin but able to addle your senses until you’re in no position to judge anything. Essentially, any story here is just filling time until they can have someone say “We built this city on rock and roll”, “I wanna rock” or “I want to know what love is” and then sing the rest of the song as we all shuffle along in recognition. It’s a mixtape musical, in which all the songs are old, popular hair-rock numbers, chosen because they have a title that fits a broad emotion, even if the lyrics are basically meaningless. Rock Of Ages is not a musical in the artistic sense, where songs are specifically written to convey what the character is feeling, what they want or the fact that they’ve just arrived in a big city with an awful lot of dreams.