“The Rocker” is born to be mild.
That’s as much due to the benign mediocrity of its direction by Peter Cattaneo (“The Full Monty”) and scripting by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky as to the lead’s underwhelming star power.
The headliner of this musical comedy about an obsessive rock-and-roll has-been is none other than (drum roll, please): Rainn Wilson!
Uh, who?
If you’ve ever even heard of him, you know that he’s a talented if strange-looking character actor. Indelibly offbeat but lacking a big screen’s leading man sparkle, he excels as a colorful backup player on TV shows like NBC’s “The Office” and HBO’s “Six Feet Under.”
Nevertheless, Wilson is frontman in today’s already conventional, only rarely droll farce. But even perfect casting would not have freshened an effort which rips off certain motifs from the quintessence of all music industry satires, 1984’s “This Is Spinal Tap,” and steals an entire narrative from Jack Black’s more recent “School of Rock.”
Wilson’s Robert “Fish” Fishman is yet another fairly skilled, self-sabotaging wannabe musician. Like Black’s similarly passionate neurotic before him, Fish gets left behind by his bandmates on the cusp of the group’s success. However, yes, he too will find karmic redemption — and that stairway to rock-and-roll heaven — through mentoring a band of youngster prodigies.
To distinguish it from “School of Rock” though, the aging artist here is a drummer, not a singer. The setting is Cleveland, not Texas. And the stakes are higher, since Fish’s former 1980s hair band becomes a heavy metal institution without him and still tops the charts two decades later.
Bitterness, of course, turns into better-ness when Fish’s unlikely participation in a high school prom band helps earn it a record deal and tour. But will this twisted sister’s authentic, old school rock tendencies, i.e., drinking to excess and trashing hotel rooms, alienate the teens and ruin him again?
Christina Applegate does her best in a thankless role, playing the lead singer’s hot mom and Wilson’s very improbable love interest. The unknown kids portraying the junior jammers also function adequately in the acting department, even if their catchy songs deliver only Muzak-like insipidity. Such bubblegum tunes make this anything but a hard-core “Rocker.”
(Quick info: Critic’s grade — 2 out of 5 stars; Stars — Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate; Director — Peter Cattaneo; rated PG-13 for drug and sexual references, nudity and language; Running time — 102 minutes)
