Rock Star
Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston star in a story of dreams lived and 80s rock star lifestyles revealed.
Chris Cole sings for a "Steel Dragons" tribute band. He idolizes the "Dragons" lead singer and dresses like him, walks like him, sings like him. When the Dragons lose their frontman, he gets plucked out of his life and inserted into the role, a dream come true. Or is it? As he gets deeper into the lifestyle, he realises that perhaps, the trappings come at a personal cost that gets heavier by the day, and as he finds himself and discovers his personal creative side, the hidden constraints of the job are not worth the benefits.
Rock Star is a story of the realisation of a dream, a young man becoming a Rock Star overnight, and the gradual awakening to the real cost of his new fame and image: the inability to sustain a "real life" outside of the rock star mould which demands all he has to give. Enlightenment regarding the "true nature" of the stardom success machine comes in small snippets here and there. As Mats, the road manager of Steel Dragons (played by an on-form Timothy Spall) puts it, "You see you've got all these birds out there dreaming about having it off with you, that makes the guys want to be you. The guys are the ones that buy the records, so if the chicks don't like you the guys are gone. I mean put it this way - your job is to live the fantasy other people only dream about". Whether the insights are true or not, they make for a good film!
As Chris begins to live the life of a rock star, the 24-hour party begins to take over his life, and aspects of his former life begin to drop away, his girlfriend starts a company in Seattle, and when he comes to visit, they have so little left in common that she splits up with him. As time goes by, an awareness of what he's giving up creeps up on him, and as the sacrifices he's asked to make mount up, he faces having to sacrifice it all to find his own voice.
Marc Wahlberg does very well as the lead singer of the Dragons, and the victim of temptation as he is offered his dreams on a plate with little awareness of the cost. Rather than play the world of rock stardom as a heavy-handed drug-riddled parody, this movie portrays it as a lot of fun, but ultimately not what Chris Cole was meant to do with his life.
While I would recommend Almost Famous as a far more touching and emotionally involving look at the perils of the Rock Star lifestyle, with a broader cast of more deeply developed characters, Rock Star did not deserve the straight-to-video treatment it received, especially given the level of much of what has graced our theatre screens of late. When next in the video store, at least read the sleeve on the DVD, and give this one a chance.
Posted by nlvp at June 5, 2003 01:09 PM