Gordon-11 This film tells the story of a guitarist who got thrown out of a band that subsequently becomes super famous. He lives with anger for the next twenty years. All is changed when he gets his fame unexpectedly in an unlikely band."The Rocker" is a fun comedy. It got me giggling a few times due to silly jokes. I like Christina Applegate's character, I think she's quite fun and lively because of her character's history of being in a band. The subplot of forgiveness and giving yourself a chance to be happy is a good message as well. By the way, Bradley Cooper fans beware, he has only got a very small role in the film, speaking only one line. Though I'll probably not remember it after a few months, I enjoyed watching this brain off film.

RainDogJr There's a scene in Peter Cattaneo's THE ROCKER in which the main character (Rainn Wilson's sort of version of "rocker Jack Black", Robert Fishman aka Fish) correctly puts the, as he call it, "drive test" as a true indicator if a song does or does not work. I mean, who doesn't love to drive with a badass tune playing in the car? Who doesn't love to drive to some great The Doors album? Or to some killer Motörhead tunes and feel, like Fish says, "on top of the world"? Here Fish is out there driving together with one of his band-mates (Teddy Geiger's character Curtis). They will test a song Curtis wrote. For them the song does work, does rock, and does make you feel like you're sitting on top of the world. But if a movie with as a title like THE ROCKER says that a song like the one Curtis wrote totally rocks, something is pretty darn wrong. Nobody who truly loves rock music will drive to that song and f****** rock! Probably in every single review of this movie we have a comparison with Richard Linklater's THE SCHOOL OF ROCK. If you still wonder why, well I just say to you that Wilson's character is a frustrated rocker who now will find a new chance with a band of kids. Hell, it actually begins in the EXACT same way (with the main character being kicked out of a band) and ends in the… well enough with the spoilers. To finish my "drive test" point, here a real problem is that the kids don't rock (they are not really *kids* though, but adolescents). The music is closer to the Jonas Brothers than to The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Cream, AC/DC, or any of the other great rock bands that THE SCHOOL OF ROCK paid homage to. And certainly that homage thing was one of the reasons why that 2003 Linklater movie was a real blast. Yes, there's only one true rocker here, and Wilson as Fish really is good, darn good fun (just read again Fish's dialog I put as the summary!), but in the end he just can't help the *just plain unmemorable* rest of the movie. Also, in the end everyone sort of forgot that Fish was a real rocker, you know, he *has* to be around a so-so cast of kids, damn Jane Lynch playing the un-cool serious character (his husband was funny, though), enough said. A mixed bag, the kid of thing that makes you say, in the most convinced way, the "I will not watch this again".

Chrysanthepop While it starts off hilariously with some promise, Peter Cattaneo's 'The Rocker' quickly treads on a predictable path and the end result is a generic comedy about a rockstar's fall from grace and then climbing back up. The story lacks development and the pacing is uneven. It starts off with a decent pace and then moves very fast and then slows down in the latter portion. That is not to say that this isn't an enjoyable watch. Thanks, mainly to the cast, especially Rainn Wilson, that most of the humour works. It was also a relief that Cattaneo and the writers didn't rely too much on toilet humour. Rainn Wilson is terrific in his role and he easily carries the film. However, comedic talents like Christina Applegate and Jane Lynch are wasted. The younger cast is impressive despite the lack of development in their characters. While Teddy Geiger and Josh Gad turn in sincere performances, Emma Stone turns out to be the outstanding one of the lot as she continues to prove why she is among the best of the young lot. The songs are forgettable. Overall, it's not a great film but funny enough, thanks to Wilson, to draw some laughter.

Sandcooler The first fifteen minutes of this movie is great, it's filled with beautiful, melancholic scenes. A washed-up musician trying to go for one last moment of fame, that's a story you can get into, and Rainn Wilson plays his role in a fairly convincing way. Sadly, what follows is rather lame and different from what I expected. There's very little actual humor in this movie, the characters are totally one-dimensional (meet alternative teenage girl #9542) and the whole thing is constantly swimming dangerously close to the dreaded Disney Channel territory. Just check out the music itself, it almost sounds like the Jonas Brothers' lost tapes. Tough to imagine an aspiring metal artist would want to be in a 1000-mile radius of this band, but that's just one of the many weird things we just have to suck up. And of course there are also subplots about love interests, there's just no possible way to avoid that in this kind of movie. They slow the movie down more than anything, which makes it rather boring to boot. This movie is very similar to "School of Rock", but somehow it's also lots worse.