Dir:  Peter Cattaneo  Stars:  Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate, Teddy Geiger, Emma Stone

Synopsis:  A failed drummer is given a second chance at fame.

Here is a great concept that is ruined by a wholly unoriginal treatment.  The Rocker should have been a fun send up of loud and sweaty rock n' roll, but instead it comes off as a bland colour-by-numbers snoozefest.

I'm not only a movie geek --- I'm also a music geek, and the movie offended both sensibilities.  The Rocker was the perfect opportunity to write a hilarious and satirical send up of the music biz, MTV, YouTube, hair metal --- a ton of great targets!  But the jokes (if you want to call them that...) barely scratch the surface of these things.  Not only that --- but it's a movie about a rocker, and the music sucks!  The writers also didn't seem to know much about music history, or even common sense.  There's a scene where a guitar is sitting on it's stand, not plugged in, and a character touches it --- it feedsback in his face.  Guitars that aren't plugged in don't feedback!!!  And the way the band A.D.D. (the young band in the movie) open for the fictional metal band Vesuvius?  That would be like the Jonas Brothers opening for Motley Crue!  It would never happen.  Am I nitpicking?  Maybe.  But hear me out --- I don't mind if a bunch of silly and ridiculous things happen.  In one scene, Rainn Wilson is thrown from a moving van, and sits up comically right after.  That's fine.  Things don't always have to be accurate to life.  However --- things should at least make sense.  A lot of these bad details would have been easy to fix --- why not plug the guitar in?  Why not have the music in a movie about music be good?  These things got under my skin as I watched the movie.  The moviemakers think we're stupid, so they don't bother paying attention to these details.  Just shoot it, throw it in the theatre, and watch the dollars roll in.  Well, I'm glad to report that it didn't quite happen that way, as The Rocker came in at like, 8th place in the box office. 

Okay, ranting aside, there was an amazing cast of comic heavyweights as backgrounder performers, but Rainn Wilson seemed like a poor man's Jack Black.  He should stick to the quirky weirdo roles like The Office and Six Feet Under.

The Rocker was an utterly boring and predictable mess.  There were times when I didn't even feel like I was watching a comedy.  I went in hoping for the next Spinal Tap, but this was more like a lame after school special.  Rock n' roll is about attitude --- but The Rocker was generic watered down Disney Channel drivel.  Go back and watch School of Rock instead --- that was an infinately better movie, with a director (Richard Linklater) that cares about music, something you can feel in the movie itself.

I'm going to go with 1 Dork out of 5 on the Geek-o-Meter.  Boo-urns.