Advanced Review: THE ROCKER

This is an advanced review for The Rocker, originally to be released July 30th, but now currently pushed back until August 20th. Whenever it does get released, we'll revisit this post.


The Rocker



Starring- Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate, Teddy Geiger, Emma Stone, Josh Gad, Jason Sudeikis, Jane Lynch, Jeff Garlin, Will Arnett



Directed by Peter Cattaneo



Grade: C-



"A lot of elevators play Celine Dion... that doesn't make it right."

Actors who get defined to one television role often have a blessing and a curse. They experience popularity and job security for the duration of their career-making character, but then they also struggle to develop a successful transition away from it. Michael Richards often superseded his titular co-star as Kramer in Seinfeld, but couldn't etch out anything of substance on his own. Bob Denver was known as Gilligan for the rest of his life. Same goes more or less for people like George Wendt, Megan Mullally, James Van Der Beek, Neil Patrick Harris, etc. They just can't escape the shadow of what made them a household name in the first place.

So is the case of Rainn Wilson and his first fully-engaged star-making turn, The Rocker. Stuck somewhere between a vehicle for Wilson, a vehicle for stalwart teen rocker Teddy Geiger, and an earnest if lukewarm attempt to appease every demographic with a slightly risque but never truly offensive PG-13 family message film, The Rocker never reaches that pantheon of hard metal licks. Instead it plays like weak radio-friendly pop rock.

The Rainn man plays Robert 'Fish' Fishman, once the highly touted drummer of 1980's hair metal band Vesuvius (with cheeky cameos by Will Arnett, Fred Armisen and Bradley Cooper), now a loser living in his sister's attic over 20 years later. His nebbish nephew Matt (Josh Gad, of FOX's short-lived Back To You) is playing the prom with his band A.D.D, and when their drummer gets expelled from school, Matt is forced to call upon his uncle for help. Igniting new passion into his life, Fish wheels and deals the local garage band into scoring gigs and going on tour, often in ways he didn't plan for. Along the way, he and his younger bandmates finds lessons in life and begins to grow up.

Everybody who has seen at least 50 mainstream movies know how these kinds of films end up. Each of the band members have ups, they have downs, they face their biggest challenge, the big bad villain (in this case being Fish's old band Vesuvius) gets its long-awaited comeuppance, and Fish gets the girl. All of this at the mere price of logical fallacy and enough pratfalls to make Chevy Chase want to sue.

Whereas Wilson's supporting role in My Super Ex-Girlfriend basically placed him as a jerk with glasses much in the vein as his character Dwight in The Office, Wilson's The Rocker persona almost strives with the singular goal of making him the exact opposite. He wears longer hair (a relic of the 1980's glam he's refused to move on with), doesn't wear glasses, and has a 'wild' personality. The movie itself is centered around a dozen or so gags that cause Fish bodily harm, a broad tactic that is rarely used in The Office.

But the trouble with this of course is, without the Dwight persona, Wilson isn't really all that much interesting. He hasn't had much of a chance to shine elsewhere, but does anybody remember his bit roles in Almost Famous, Sahara or Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal? For the few people that sat through House Of 1000 Corpses and watched him get killed and turned into some kind of mermaid creature, did they really look at his performance and say "Wow, he's going to be a star someday"?

Similarly unimpressive is Teddy Geiger, the 'real' brains behind the fictional band as the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist. He has genuine talent, but his character is so depressing and one-note for much of the movie it's hard to see him as a legitimate actor. I can imagine that after his short-lived success with his album Underage Thinking in 2006 went nowhere, he's looking jealously towards the increasingly manic fandom of The Jonas Brothers, wondering where it all went wrong.

The music in The Rocker is manufactured almost as much as a Disney multimedia franchise, only much less successful. Geiger and the modern A.D.D. band are obviously going for that 'tween rock sound somewhere between The All-American Rejects, Boys Like Girls and any number of the Fueled By Ramen label cohorts. They're all catchy enough, but nothing inspires. Worse that, not a single song is played in its entirety. Seems the writers concocted a verse and a chorus and settled at that. Had they made full-length songs and released them before the film comes out, income-flushed ten-year-olds might be almost as excited to see this as they were for Camp Rock and High School Musical 3.

If Rainn Wilson is ever going to come out of the shadow of Dwight Schrute, he needs a better outing than this. The Rocker seemed like a limp idea that Wilson was able to jump on in an effort to give himself some public face time. Unfortunately, plain and simple, this isn't the kind of movie that will take him to the top of the charts.

Advanced Review: PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

This is an advanced review for the August 8th release Pineapple Express. We will revisit the review when the film is released to the general public. To see the DVD mini-review of Martin Lawrence's Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins, Click Here


Pineapple Express



Starring- Seth Rogen, James Franco, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Danny McBride, Amber Heard, Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson, Ed Begley Jr, Nora Dunn.



Directed by David Gordon Green



Grade: B-



"Thug life!"

Marijuana smokers rejoice. Pineapple Express becomes the first box office wide release since 1998's Half Baked to make no qualms about it's weed-y roots. Trying to create a new breed of film with over-the-top violence and action coupled with dirty, raunchy humor and gloriously unabashed love for the plant drug, Pineapple Express tries to do too much, and ends up doing way too little.

Opinion-takers at the advanced screening were asking patrons if it was the next Cheech & Chong. Not that Cheech & Chong is such a good movie to want to compare praise to, but Pineapple Express is not only inferior to the former film, but it's a black mark on Seth Rogen's otherwise sterling Apatow-linked career. Freaks & Geeks, Undeclared, The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Superbad, all great shows and movies. Pineapple Express? Disappointing.

Rogen stars as Dale Denton, a subpoena server who is inexplicably dating a teenager in high school. And he really, really, loves pot. Off the bat he witnesses a drug kingpin (Office Space's Gary Cole) and a saucy little policewoman (Rosie Perez) murder one of the sons of his main rival. They connect Dale to the crime scene thanks to his rare 'Pineapple Express' joint, and thus sets off a chain of who's-working-for-who scenarios involving his pot dealer Saul (Spider-Man's James Franco), two hitmen (Kevin Corrigan, Craig Robinson) and Saul's own middleman Red (Danny McBride). Dale and Saul bond as their adventure reaches its climax.

The humor, both marijuana-related and otherwise, have some extremely funny moments. But for every joke that hits, there are just as many that are extremely awkward to sit through. The cast was obviously going for that semi-improvisational, stream-of-consciousness feel that Apatow ekes so well out of his directed cast, but for Rogen and director David Gordon Green, it just throws the film's pacing out the window. Granted that success rate is much better than most other comedians' films this year, but for Rogen, we the audience expected better. The funniest parts of the redband trailer, as well as the awesome song "Paper Planes" by M.I.A., are literally M.I.A. from the film.

James Franco steals the movie performance-wise, but maybe it's because the rest of the cast fails to inspire. Franco seems genuine as Saul, a stoned loser who just wants companionship. He often has the best lines in the film and we tend to care about him over Dale. Rogen on the other hand is actually sort of annoying and loud, and when the scenes get packed with quick reactionary moments, he exposes himself to still be a green actor.

The other players are one-note at best. Gary Cole has very little personality, playing his drug lord as almost a straight villain. Rosie Perez hasn't been in a film I've seen since God knows when, and I STILL can't understand her when she talks. Kevin Corrigan and Craig Robinson (of Grounded For Life and The Office respectively) are more awkward than funny, and Danny McBride's one good line in the movie-- "Thug life!"-- is in the trailers. The clumsy ending involving Rogen, Franco and McBride, was seriously anti-climatic.

Why is Dale dating a high school girl? Statutory Rape aside, they never explained it, nor does it make a lot of sense, even for a movie like this. If she was ugly, or if Rogen was particularly good-looking, then maybe I'd get it. Or if she was only using him for free drugs, I'd totally understand. But from all accounts none of that was the case, and we are forced to believe that model/actress Amber Heard (Hidden Hills, Never Back Down) genuinely wants to date a scuzzy 25-year-old subpoena server who looks like he's 35. How much of a boner/ego did Rogen get while writing this idea?

For the longest time I was a fan of Seth Rogen, years before he became the warty toad prince of raunchy but pathos-driven R-rated comedy. From Freaks and Geeks to Undeclared, popping up in minuscule roles in Donnie Darko and Anchorman, he was very much under appreciated. Judd Apatow gave him a chance at screen-time in The 40 Year Old Virgin, which led to bona fide stardom in Knocked Up. Now he is no longer the dirty Seth Rogen with a cult fan base but Seth Rogen, the dirty Hollywood multi-tasking entity.

Pineapple Express could have been a resplendent example, setting up a template for more films of the same cloth. But something here did not click at all, at least not from the Rogen Wing of the School of Apatow. Maybe it was the budget. Maybe it was the director (who previously helmed the extravagantly different drama Snow Angels). Maybe they all were affected too much by the stage weed on set. Whatever it was, Pineapple Express failed to rocket to the pinnacle of our funny bones.