It's easy to forget for some reason, but summer movie musicals have had a pretty good run lately, from the massively successful Mamma Mia! to the perfectly lovely Hairspray. OK, that's just two examples, but we're about to get a third this year with Rock of Ages, another adaptation of a Broadway jukebox musical that's got a huge all-star cast lined up to draw even those who don't normally go for singing and dancing onscreen. Instead of original music, the song of Rock of Ages are all 80s hair-rock classics, including "Don't Stop Believin'" and "We Built This City" and "We're Not Gonna Take It." And the movie version will include some other 80s songs that weren't included in the musical, as evidenced by this snippet of Tom Cruise, in character as the rocker Stacee Jaxx, singing "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by Def Leppard. Are you ready for this? Here it comes:
That's just one of the dozens of songs that will await you on the movie's official soundtrack, which goes on pre-sale on iTunes today. The movie itself comes to theaters on June 15, and will provide the very-necessary visual of Cruise himself rocking out-- he sounds perfectly fine in this track, but it's really just a cover of a song, without the crazy Cruise dance moves to go along with it. It's really no surprise that Cruise acquits himself fine with this song-- he's always seemed like one of those people who can do just about everything well, and he proved his excellent physical skills just last December in Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol. If he scales the outside of a building in Rock of Ages, then I'll really be impressed.
The problem for musical nerds like me, though, is that jukebox musicals like Rock of Ages aren't nearly as fun as musicals with their own original songs. Even though this is directed by Hairspray's Adam Shankman, I can't quite believe it'll be as fun as that poppy musical. Then again, I'm always happy to be surprised.
