'The Rocker' a solid delivery from Rainn Wilson
Rainn Wilson is both kid-friendly and enjoyable, despite being naked.
Aug. 26, 2008
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Walking out of "The Rocker," I heard someone - over the credits music - make a particularly teenaged complaint: "It was like a Disney movie." The hostile response from the high school set confirmed my own feelings - "The Rocker" is the worst advertised movie of the year. The film's marketing has been carried, primarily, on Rainn Wilson's naked back. It's a campaign reminiscent of Will Ferrell and Judd Apatow's swearing and moderately overweight white guys, which have been involved in some of the funniest movies in recent memory.
But this movie, which is enjoyable in spite of its apparent Disney-ness, is not a part of that genre at all: it's less "Anchorman" than High School of Rock. It's a movie that, were it not for the aforementioned nudity, would make for a perfectly comfortable night with your parents.
Anyone, in fact, who has seen "The School of Rock" will be well-versed in the story's particulars. When the film opens Wilson is "Fish" Fishman, drummer for a hair metal band named Vesuvius. When he's kicked out of the band on the night they get a record deal - eventually becoming the most famous rock band of the '90s - Fish is heartbroken, slogging through the next 20 years in customer service. After losing his job in a Vesuvius-related blow-up (they're about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), Fish is forced to live with his sister, where he learns that his teenaged nephew's band needs a drummer.
What follows isn't difficult to guess. Fish teaches the kids to loosen up and they teach him to get over his old scars, and along the way, thanks to a YouTube viral video featuring Fish as "The Naked Drummer," they become famous - but not before teaching Fish to love. There's a lot of teaching going on in this film; characters soliloquize as often as they talk, and they're always quoting one another's uplifting speeches when the chips are down. That's where the Disney comes in.
In spite of this, and in spite of the way in which you can see the formula's gears turning before every terrible misunderstanding, "The Rocker" is never less than pleasant and usually funny. Wilson isn't given much of a chance to use the mannerisms that make him the creepiest man on TV during "The Office," but he shows off a knack for the kind of broad comic moves that come with drumming in the nude. Meanwhile, an excellent supporting cast - particularly Jason Sudeikis as an agent desperately clinging to youth culture and Josh Gad as Fish's socially lost nephew - does an excellent job with what is often mediocre material.
"The Rocker" isn't what the commercials would have you believe, but its reluctance to go over the top allows it to remain safely entertaining. A louder, raunchier movie with so many flaws would have been too abrasive to sit through. With the marketing over and the movie in theaters, "The Rocker" is what it is - a fine film for audiences younger than 14 and older than 18.
More Aug. 26, 2008 Arts Stories
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