Disney can relax, John Carter is no longer the front runner for a Golden Razzie.
Movie musicals are a hard sell for me. I love stage musicals, but something gets really mucked up when they are made into movies. The spectacle doesn't translate and comes across as silly and overdone. I feel that it is a genre that rarely works in the cinema. There are of course notable exceptions, like Singing in the Rain or Little Shop of Horrors (one of my all time favorite movies). I think that it's a touchy business and that most of these recent theater to screen adaptations were best left alone.
I didn't see the theater version of Rock of Ages. I know that it was nominated for multiple Tonys (didn't win) and was generally well received. After seeing this horrendous movie version, I can't imagine that anything would compel me to lay out money to see the stage version.
There was so much wrong with the movie, I don't even know where to begin. I also need to note, that I rarely walk out of movies, but Union Jack Dan and I nearly did with this one. Instead, we suffered through it, with lots of heavy sighs and sidelong pained glances that included much eye rolling.
The story is predictable and the dialogue is so poorly written that it felt like elementary school kids had been commissioned to write a play. The dialogue was bogged down with bad exposition. This script could be used in a beginning screen writing class for an example of pitfalls to avoid when writing a screenplay.
All of the comedy fell flat. It's clearly supposed to be a comedy, but it is in now way funny. It fluctuates between being dumb and being awkward with a few gross moments thrown in for good measure.
What the hell is going on with the choreography? Bad, bad, bad! The worst was the Catherine Zeta Jones Hit Me With Your Best Shot number. Jones and her conservative cohorts dance routine could best be described as aggressive flailing. The intention was humor, but it just wasn't funny.
Speaking of Jones, she was the worst of the bunch. The entire movie was filled with normally good actors doing caricatures. Jones was nearly unwatchable. Paul Giamatti took second place in the bad acting category, playing the sleazy music manager. The entire movie was so overdone that I cringed the entire time. The only cast member who was even remotely watchable and mainly because the character wasn't so over the top was Julianne Hough. She was okay. She couldn't save the train wreck, but she was the least cringe-worthy.
The only deeming quality might be the music, however, do we really need to hear more Journey? Don't Stop Believing is a song that just won't die. It felt like the entire idea for the story was built around that one song.
If your time is valuable to you, don't waste it on this crappy movie.