On Screen

As the lights dimmed before The Rocker, a kid behind
me—trying to scare his sister—moaned, “The Reapah’s heeah!
THE REEEAPAAAH!” Good one, kid behind me. That joke was both funnier
and more metal than the movie that was to come.

Robert “Fish” Fishman (Rainn Wilson, in his first leading role) is
the drummer of and creative mastermind behind Vesuvius, an ’80s hair
band on the brink of its big break. For nonsense reasons I already
forgot (something to do with selling out, I suppose), the band turns
turncoat and kicks Fish to the curb. He spends the next 20 years bummed
out and sloppy, while Vesuvius, um, (insert volcanic pun here). When
his teenage nephew’s band finds itself without a drummer, Fish unpacks
his headband collection and his sweaty grimace and joins up.

The Rocker does not totally suck. Like most films devoted to
the absurd kickassedness of rock, it’s hopelessly derivative, but I’ve
sat through worse moviegoing experiences than a secondhand Spinal
Tap. (And, incidentally, were I forced to recast Spinal Tap for 2008, I’d probably head straight for Will Arnett, Fred Armisen,
Bradley Cooper, and Lonny Ross—all fucking great as
Vesuvius).

A band of cute teenagers on a steady rise to the top isn’t exactly a
recipe for dramatic tension—and apparently, it has been decreed
that everyone in this movie shall be played by the aftertaste of Jack
Black. But the bottomless charm factory that is Rainn Wilson (a man
unafraid of looking like a human frog in a wig) mostly pulls it off. I
do hope the Reaper doesn’t come for his movie career quite yet.