Familiar fun

Decadent, oversexed and over-teased, “Rock of Ages,” the film version of the Tony-nominated musical, sings a familiar song.

Stifled by her rural life, smalltown girl Sherrie (Julianne Hough) picks up and leaves for the headbangers’ haven of Los Angeles. Underneath the gleam of the stage lights, she meets Drew (Diego Boneta), another aspiring musician.

The glossy lure of fame threatens to tear the couple apart. Can they have both love and success? It’s a movie musical — you guess the ending.

Hough looks the naïve smalltown girl, but her voice resembles the sugary pop of today’s stars, not the hardened sounds of bygone rockers. Overly sweet, Hough doesn’t match Boneta’s hungry demand for both love and fame.

Rock god Stacie Jaxx (Tom Cruise) rules the Strip with his eyeliner-rimmed eyes and tight leather chaps. Jaxx looks and sounds the part, but the one-dimensional writing only hints at something below the surface of his tattooed torso.

“I am a slave to rock ’n’ roll,” Jaxx says. This strange compulsion to conform to the rules of rock, a genre defined by nonconformity, could be developed to give both Cruise and the film the heart they need.

Where the acting and underdeveloped plot fail to deliver, the music succeeds. Surprisingly, the iconic songs of the hair band era give the plot depth and context. Fun and recognizable, the music meshes perfectly with the plot.

Overall, the film is upbeat and catchy, there to have a good time and celebrate the era lost to pop music. However, it offers nothing more than that.

“Rock of Ages” is forgettable and unoriginal, like many of the former rock gods who ruled the stage.

By Bridget Ameche