Category: Reviews

REVIEW: Ruby Sparks

A writer’s character coming to life is nothing new. It was done effectively on The Twilight Zone and Sharon Stone even portrayed a muse come to life to bedevil Albert Brooks. As a result, the premise behind the charming Ruby Sparks is not at all fresh but the approach is what makes this small film well worth your time and attention.  That it is heartfelt and well-constructed is to be expected considering the movie comes from Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris who first caught our attention with Little Miss Sunshine. They have been missed.

Paul Dano is Calvin, an author who hit his first novel out of the park and has been struggling to remain commercially relevant ever since (think Jonathan Franzen). Then, finally, he creates a character, Ruby, who genuinely stirs his soul thanks to a prompt given him by his therapist (Elliott Gould). The pages flow easily for the first time in a decade. A week later, though, Ruby (Zoe Kazan) has come to life and is found sitting on his couch, ready to experience life. Ruby is 26, doesn’t own a computer and always roots for the underdog, something Calvin most certainly is.

What does one do when the woman of his dreams is made manifest? If he imagined her to life, can he or should he alter her to his exact specifications? And that is what propels the remainder of the film, a sitcom version of magical realism. Does he share her with the world, make love to her, or admire her from afar? His brother Harry (Chris Messina) says jump her after realizing she is the women Calvin has been writing about.

What starts out as a pretty funny comedy takes on serious tones as we progress and the shifting mood isn’t smoothly handled. It raises some interesting question and only partially answers them, leaving you somewhat entertained, somewhat dissatisfied. This is about Calvin growing up and we watch him flail all over the place despite a support system including his mom and his step-father (nice cameos from Annette Bening and Antonio Banderas). Calvin remains a mess, still in pain after breaking up with his last girlfriend (Deborah Ann Woll), and has a tough relationship with his lousy literary agent (Steve Coogan).

Dano and Kazan are wonderful together, ably supported by the deep, veteran cast. They rise above the film when the material gets weak or meanders but overall leave you entertained from beginning to end. This could have benefitted from a stronger script but still remains entertaining and thoughtful, not at all a bad combination.

The transfer to Blu-ray by 20th Century Home Entertainment is excellent and the disc comes with the standard assortment of special features. Most feel like they came from the press materials with little shot specifically for the disc. You get a handful of pieces ranging in length from three minutes to four minutes, never letting you delve deep into the film itself.

Mike Gold: Why I Didn’t Cold-Cock Walter Simonson

gold-art-121107-7949877There’s been a lot of high-quality books lately that reprint classic stories straight from the original. My friends at IDW do a lot of those, so they’ll be deeply depressed that I’m not going to be talking about one of theirs. And of course there’s no reason to believe a comp list wouldn’t change my attitude.

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear; in this case, about two months ago. We’re at the vaunted Baltimore Comic-Con – in specific, the Harvey Awards dinner. Walter Simonson had an advance copy of Titan Books’ hardcover collection of the Alien movie adaptation, as done by Walter and the late and much, much missed Archie Goodwin. This book was the exception that proved my point that doing an absolutely first-rate adaptation of a movie is a near-impossibility.

The needs and treasures of the comic book medium are different from those of the movie medium: we have total control of time and space and we’ve got a special effects budget that is limited only by the collective minds of the producing talent. Movies, on the other hand, have going for them music, motion and the benefit of the shared-experience. Apples and oranges.

The Goodwin-Simonson Alien was one of those rare exceptions; perhaps the best of those exceptions. Either way, it was and is worthy of this new high-quality format.

So when Walter was showing off his advance copy like a proud papa before an audience of some of the most talented people in the artform (Mark Wheatley snuck me in), I thought about doing what every other red-blooded comic book fan would think of doing: cold-cocking the son of a bitch, stealing his book, jumping into my Ford Focus and driving back to Connecticut, laughing hysterically while leaving my daughter to fend for herself.

I maneuvered into position in the darkened room, avoiding Louise Simonson. While I’d take Walter on, I do not have what it takes to take on any person who could be so gifted and so nice after working for James Warren. Then, and only then, did I have an epiphany.

I’ve known Walter for decades and decades. We lived near each other on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, we played on the same volleyball team. We’ve dined hither and yon – he once drew a massive prehistoric landscape on the linen tablecloth at a Skokie Illinois restaurant in order to “illustrate” a point. I respect and admire Walter as one of the nicest human beings on the planet… with the exception of the volleyball courts.

But that’s not why I didn’t cold-cock Walter Simonson. Clearly I’ve gotten old, an aging lion gumming his dinner in the corner of the cage while the younguns are preening themselves for pussy.

No, I didn’t cold-cock him because I remembered I already ordered the book. So stealing his simply wasn’t worth the energy.

But it was worth the wait. Buy it before it sells out.

Alien : The Illustrated Story (Original Art Edition) by Archie Goodwin and Walter Simonson • Titan Books • 96 oversized pages • $75.00 retail

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil, who’s also a very nice guy

 

 

REVIEW: The Princess Bride – 25th Anniversary Edition

the_princess_bride_25th_anniversary_bluray-e1351866973620-4115778Hard to believe it’s been a quarter of a century since The Princess Bride was released to theaters. By then, I had adored William Goldman’s novel which was its basis and over time, as it hit cable then home video, it was watched repeatedly in my house. As a result, the kids grew up with it a part of their lives and they came to adore it with equal ardor. Sadly, when I tried to interest my eighth graders in seeing it recently, they stared blankly.

The conceit in the novel is that Goldman was giving us the “good parts” version of S. Morgenstern’s fantasy tale and that is adapted to the film as a grandfather (Peter Falk) reads the book to his sick grandson (Fred Savage). The rest of the fable involves the romance between beautiful Buttercup (Robin Wright) and dashing Westley (Cary Elwes) and the trials and tribulations that kept them apart – until the end when they finally kissed, one of the five greatest kisses ever recorded in history (or so we’re told). Between meeting and kissing, there are swordfights aplenty, death, resurrection, magic, cowardice, giants, tricksters, weird locales, and much more. Girls can love the romance, the boys can adore the action and both can laugh at the comical performances and clever dialogue.

Rob Reiner’s casting was pitch perfect as was his deft direction so all the elements came together to make an instant, enduring classic. With Wallace Shawn, Mandy Patinkin, Billy Crystal, Christopher Guest, and Andre the Giant, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing as it turns out and it’s a joy to see it one more time, in the 125th anniversary Blu-ray release from Warner Home Video. Reiner could have gone overboard with the humor but he reaches the edge of slapstick and pulls back time after time.

Given how often this has been previously released on DVD and Blu-ray, it’s comforting to see most of the extra features carried over here including both audio commentaries (Reiner and Goldman), The Art of Fencing (7:00), Cary Elwes’ Video Diary (4:00), a look at the Dread Pirate Roberts (12:00), twin pieces on the fantasy roots (26:00), a Makeup (11:00) piece; and “Untold Tales” (9:00). New to this edition is a 25th Anniversary Chat with Cary Elwes, Robin Wright and Rob Reiner (15:00) and Entering the Zeitgeist (15:00), examining the film’s role in today’s pop culture.

If you own one of the earlier versions, you may not need this but if you don’t have this on the shelf, this is well worth you (and your children’s) attention.

REVIEW: The French Connection

french-connection-blu-2012-300-2506419The escapades of New York Police detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle was well known even in the early 1960s and attempts to tell his story fell through until he was captured in print in the best-selling Robin Cook book The French Connection. William Friedkin helmed a film adaptation that made Doyle the poster boy for brutal but effective policemen for the next decade and catapulted character actor Gene Hackman into leading man status. The French Connection is very much a product of the 1970s as filmmakers were shaking off the restrictions of the now-dead studio system and a new wave of filmmakers were stretching their muscles, trying things that were new and fresh in terms of structure, production, and performance.

As part of 20th Century Home Entertainment’s Signature collection of classics now on Blu-ray, this film is a reminder of just how good a movie can be when all the right elements fall into place. When first released in Blu-ray back in 2009, Friedkin was intimately involved in the transfer and touted its improvements. Overlaying a saturated color print over a black and white print, Friedkin obtained a washed out color palette that he felt properly represented his vision and while purists howled. This new version is also approved by both Friedkin and Cinematographer Owen Roizman and looks good, certainly better than the original DVD. The transfer captures Manhattan at a time when it teetered on the brink of grime and bankruptcy.

Why did this win the Best Picture Award in 1971? It’s a story of good versus evil, drugs, an immortal car chase and terrific performances by an ensemble that featured Roy Scheider as Doyle’s partner Buddy “Cloudy” Russo, ex-con-turned-coffee shop owner named Sal Boca (Tony Lo Bianco), and French shipping executive Alain Charnier (Fernando Rey), who is trying to brink 120 lbs. of heroin into the city. The core story is the attempt by Doyle and Russo to find out when the shipment will arrive and arresting Charnier, but getting the facts and then executing the arrest propels the movie with the tempo of a finely tuned race car. Doyle is the center, profane, racists, crude and mesmerizing.

Speaking of races, the car chase is a class as Doyle commandeered a civilian’s Pontiac LeMans and chased an elevated train carrying an escaping hitman. Shot in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, it followed the BMT West End Line (now the D and B lines) until the subway collided with another. The front mounted cameras was undercranked so the speed appeared higher than it was but was an adrenaline-pumping sequence that elevated the film to the upper echelon of action pics at the time.

The disc re-presents the 2001 DVD’s extras including two audio commentary tracks – one from Friedkin, the second with Hackman and Scheider. The deleted scenes are accompanied with Friedkin’s interesting commentary and there are two documentaries: the BBC-produced The Poughkeepsie Shuffle and Untold Stories of The French Connection – 30th Anniversary Special. New to Blu-ray are seven new pieces: Anatomy of a Chase; Hackman on Doyle; Friedkin and Grosso Remember the Real French Connection; Scene of the Crime; Color Timing The French Connection; Cop Jazz: The Music of Don Ellis, and Rogue Cop: The Noir Connection, with historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. Like others in the Signature series, it comes with a glossy booklet with tons of information on the film.

Review: “Costume Not Included” by Matthew Hughes

costume-not-included-by-matthew-hughes-5394161It’s not easy being a superhero in the best of circumstances, so pity the poor man whose powers derive from a demon — and whose mother is dating one of the nation’s leading evangelical preachers. And when that young unfortunate’s name is Chesney Arnstruther, well…that’s someone whom you would not want to switch places with.

Chesney is the superhero of Costume Not Included, second novel in a trilogy called “To Hell and Back” — though it means that more puckishly than most fantasy books would — and I’ll direct you to my review of the first novel, The Damned Busters, for the precise details of how and why Chesney made that deal with the devil, how he did it without forfeiting his immortal soul, and why an actuary wanted to be a musclebound superhero in the first place.

There are two kinds of trilogy-middles: the ones that lose the energy of the first volume and mark time until the finale, and the ones that are happy to have gotten the scene-setting out of the way and leap into creating ever more complications to keep things interesting. Costume, luckily, is of the second type: the first book took a little while to get going, but this one hits its wry tone right up front and charges forward at exactly the right pace.

Really, how could you put down a novel that begins like this:

“I thought you weren’t speaking to me,” Chesney Arnstruther said into the phone.

“I’m not speaking to you,” said his mother. “I’m telling you something for your own good, is what I’m doing.”

I’ve spent the last several years haranguing anyone who wanders into Antick Musings about how essentially funny and entertaining a writer Matthew Hughes is — see my other reviews of Hughes books, all of which you should buy, read, and love, in approximately that order: The Other, Hespira, Template, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Majestrum — so I’ll leave that part as read: Hughes came into the SFF field writing Vance-inspired far-future books, but his influences were always deeper than Vance (not that being able to write as smoothly and sardonically as the great Jack Vance isn’t a monumental achievement to begin with), and he’s since shown that his essential qualities shine through in a variety of subgenres.

So, anyway: Chesney is a superhero, and he’s been doing well at it. Too well, actually: he’s wiped out pretty much all of the Golden Age-style street crime (guys in suits and fedoras robbing banks, muggings, and so forth) in his city, and his deal only extends so far. He can’t directly stop the sources of crime — which, in best superhero fashion, lies with a shadowy cabal that secretly runs that city — and his put-everything-into-the-right-boxes mind is not happy leaving a job undone. (His new girlfriend, Melda, is also pushing him in slightly different directions; she’s like to see him have a higher media profile and perhaps make some money from being the Actionary.)

Adding to the complications is that his mother’s new boyfriend — that noted thriller writer turned TV evangelist, Reverend Hardacre — has his own new, and very odd, theory about the secret cosmology of the world, and it’s becoming more and more clear that Hardacre is right. And the Devil is not entirely happy with the deal with Chesney — that lack of a soul coming his way vexes him, and the Devil’s whole raison d’etre is to trick and twist and sneak — and the Devil has deal with other folks who may help him cause trouble for Chesney.

So complications — very idiosyncratic, unique complications, of the kind only Hughes could create — proliferate, until Cheney finds himself chased closely by a smart police detective, meeting a Jesus Christ, (not the Jesus — not the current one, at least — but a prior, historical version) and having himself proclaimed as a new prophet by Hardacre. But Chesney still has Melda, and his demon Xaphan, on his side, plus his own inextinguishable drive for truth and justice. And there’s still one book to come in this trilogy.

Not to sound like a broken record, but Matt Hughes is a great, wonderfully entertaining writer — his dialogue pops, his people are quirky and real, and his situations could be written by no one else in the world. If you don’t like his work, there’s got to be something wrong with you.

REVIEW: Prometheus

prometheus-6186619Ridley Scott rarely repeats himself, avoiding formulaic sequels, useless prequels, and remakes. Instead, the stylist conjures up new works and attempts to be thought-provoking time after time. You might have bought into the hype that this year’s Prometheus is an out and out set up to his Alien, but you’d be wrong. While tangentially connected to the first successful science fiction/horror film hybrid, this film is a pure science fiction film owing plenty to Stanley Kubrick.

The movie, now out on disc from 20th Century Home Entertainment, is an ambitious production with a strong cast, surrounded by amazing visuals. While we laughed at how weak the story and characterizations were in James Cameron’s Avatar, here, we are merely disappointed the story isn’t a match for the visual virtuosity on display. While far from Scott’s best, he deserves credit for trying something different and challenging his audience.

Scott sets his story in 2093, optimistically thinking we will be regularly working in space and ready to traverse the distant reaches of the galaxy. Scientists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) find a map as part of a 30,000-year-old cave painting on the Isle of Skye, confirming there is sentient life elsewhere in the universe. Dubbed The Engineers, they seemingly beckon mankind to find them. The audience has already met them in an opening sequence that suggests they arrived on Earth with some goo that ignited the spark of life (and was also seen as the mummified Space Jockey way back in 1979). To discover the answer, deep-pocketed Peter Weyland (Guy Pierce) funds the construction of The Prometheus, which is thusly launched, its crew in hibernation en route to moon LV-223 and the evidence of intelligent life.

Heading up the crew is Mereditch Vickers (Charlize Theron) alongside the ship’s captain Janek (Idris Elba) with android David (Michael Fassbender), geologist Fifield (Sean Harris), and biologist Millburn (Rafe Spall). One trick he does reuse from Alien is that before long, things go horribly awry. The story has gaping, starship-sized plot holes and the grand themes – where do we come from? — do nothing to mask them. It would have been nice if the crew had more depth of character or interacted in more interesting ways.

Fassbender has the toughest job, making his eight generation android different than the others seen in earlier films making up the Alien universe. Theron is strong with her work but Rapace gives us the more interesting, nuanced performance.

Scott shot this for big screen 3-D, framing things to pop just so, and dazzle us with detail. Thankfully, that all transfers pretty nicely to the home screen and 2-D. The transfer is pretty spectacular both audio and visual.

The Combo Pack offers you the film on Blu-ray, DVD, and Ultraviolet (a larger Combo Pack with 3-D Blu-ray is also an option, with a fourth disc containing an amazing three-and-half-hour documentary by Charles de Lauzirika). The special features provided on the standard Blu-ray begins with Scott’s audio commentary, supplemented with one from co-writers John Spaihts and Damon Lindelof.

There are thirty-seven minutes of Deleted, Extended & Alternate Scenes which you can on their own or with audio commentary by editor Pietro Scalia and VFX supervisor Richard Stammers. These are all interesting to watch, several of which would have made the film stronger. The Peter Weyland Files (18:57) are culled from the Internet.

REVIEW: Bones the Complete Seventh Season

Bones has carefully straddled the line between light-hearted crime drama, ala Hart to Hart and taut melodrama. Over the seven seasons, showrunner Hart Hanson has carefully brought the main characters, Special Agent Seely Booth (David Boreanaz) and Dr. Temperance Brennan (Emily Deschanel), together, nicely balancing the “will they or won’t they?” romantic tension until finally, in the last season, they finally became a couple. Probably quicker than anticipated, thanks to a real life pregnancy, Brennan was with child.

The seventh season of Bones, now out on Blu-ray from 20th Century Home Entertainment, is a shorter than normal thirteen episodes because of the circumstances, but Hanson did not slow down the pacing, setting things up for a dramatic cliffhanger that left fans really hanging for the spring and summer.

Along the way, the supporting cast at the Jeffersonian Institute Forensic Sciences Department was also given their moments in the spotlight, proving they are one of the richest, most interesting ensembles on prime time. With all the personal issues surrounding the cast, it’s pretty impressive they still manage to fit in unique corpse of the week stories. Things kicked off with a body at a paintball event and continued forward. The forensic testing results remain ridiculously fast in arriving and Angela (Michaela Conlin) never meets a challenge whose butt she can’t kick so there are definite stretches of credulity, moreso this season than in the past. Sweets (John Frances Daley) lost some of his boyish charm as he grew deadly accurate with his service revolver.

The series nicely rotated the usual interns, freshening the group dynamic with regularity and the addition of southern gentleman Finn Abernathy (Luke Kleintank) was a nice addition. His flirtation and dating of Cam’s (Tamara Taylor) daughter was an interesting development that ultimately went nowhere.

The most unusual episode of the season has to be “The Suit on the Set” where Booth and Brennan travel to watch a film based on one of her books is being made. They skewer Hollywood’s inability to faithfully adapt a novel, going for busts and pyrotechnics over plot and characterization. A little silly but a refreshing change of pace.

The finale sees the return of criminal Christopher Pellant who goes out of his way to frame Brennan, turning her into a wanted felon. The problem here is that the circumstantial evidence mounts so high so fast, at least one of the characters should have at least questioned the absurdity of all this damning information pouring out at once. But nope, never happened. Instead, Brennan and her dad (Ryan O’Neal) take the baby and go on the run, leaving Booth behind.

Given the shortened season, one would have expected either additional special features to compensate or fewer given the dearth of material to work with. We get more of the latter than the former with two deleted scenes, commentary on one episode, a four minute Gag Reel, and two small pieces on the Hollywood episode. First, there’s Creating The Suit on the Set (10:59) on how the episode was made then a fun, fake Bone of Contention: On the Red Carpet (3:18)

I was late to the series and was able to plow through the first five seasons to jump on board but you cannot start cold with this season. It’s too involved in its continuity and character relationships to be totally accessible to a newcomer. But for those of us who are fans of this show, adapted from the novels by Kathy Reichs, it was a slid if flawed season and worth a second look.

REVIEW: Moonrise Kingdom

You have to credit director Wes Anderson with having a unique vision, one that is slightly off kilter compared with most of his fellow filmmakers. As a result, his films tend to visually interesting and highly stylized, getting notably quirky performances out of his cast. Moonrise Kingdom, his oddly sweet summer confection, is the latest such offering. He revels in dysfunctional groupings, in this case a family and local community, set in 1965, on the cusp of dramatic changes to society as a whole. This tale features two twelve year olds who run away as a storm looms over New Penzance, an isolated island off the coast of northern New England and has a kid’s book feel to it. In many ways, it reminded me of having fairy tale similarities to the hyper-realized rainbow bright Pushing Daisies.

You laugh at the oddball characters, marvel at the mannered performances from a stellar cast, and find your expectations upended time and again. You root for the kids, Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward), to find happiness. To them, it’s a love story. He abandons his scout troop and she runs away from home, and you would too given her dazed dad Walt (Bill Murray) and adulterous mother Laura (Frances McDormand).

Sam is an orphan and his foster family doesn’t want him back so it falls to the local sheriff (Bruce Willis) and the scout master (Edward Norton) to mount the hunt. With the storm approaching, things are ratcheted high enough to snag the attention of Scout commander Pierce (Harvey Keitel) and Khaki Scout chaplain Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman) along with Social Services (Tilda Swinton); and yeah, that’s the character’s name.

While the storm and the missing children are whipping the adults up into a stylized frenzy, the two kids are innocent, unaware, and wholly devoted to one another. While every adult is flawed and mostly unlikable, the kids are fresh-faced and worthy of rooting for. What’s interesting is watching the effect their unseen devotion to one another is having on the adults as the film progresses. One by one, love transforms (or at least softens) the adults, the authority figures who are thinking of punishment and retribution.

The story is charming and riveting in its simplicity, a testament to Anderson’s skill as a storyteller. The movie is lovingly transferred to Blu-ray so the soft colors, a palette that works so well as an element, are well captured. The audio is also superb.

Amazingly, there are but three three-minute featurettes included on the disc: A Look Inside Moonrise Kingdom, Welcome to the Island of New Penzance, and Set Tour with Bill Murray.

Review: Mike Baron’s Helmet Head

Helmut Head • Mike Baron • Amazon Kindle book, available in all e-book formats • 206 pages • $4.99 download

The premise of Helmet Head is simple: Young Jewish motorcycle cop Peter Fagan inadvertently stumbles into the path of someone or something that stalks bikers and leaves them headless. Although there are plenty of outlaw bikers in the story, the killer targets anyone on a motorcycle. Right after he dispatches a member of the local southern Illinois biker gang, he pursues Fagan with frightening singleness of purpose. He pursues Fagan all the way to the biker hangout, a rundown, out of the way bar, where Helmet Head doesn’t kill anyone. Instead, he orders a drink. When the bartender refuses to serve him, he leaves. This sets the tone for a rather long stretch.

The action kicks into high gear again in the last third of the story, and if you can get past the mad scientist angle and the obligatory damsel in distress, it’s a fairly entertaining ride. The climactic conflagration is a smorgasbord of horror movie clichés – which might have worked, despite the rather offhanded way one of the main characters dies, if it weren’t for the rather anti-climactic (and inevitable) scene in which the villain meets his end.

Mike Baron is a good writer, and that shows early on in Helmet Head – and based on my extremely limited sample of self-published works of fiction, Helmet Head is the best-written one so far. The first few chapters are tightly paced, with just enough colorful metaphor to give the narrative depth. But good writing and good storytelling are not the same thing.

Helmet Head apparently started as an idea for a “slasher film,” and that unfortunately also shows. Unlike a non-stop action film, a good novel, even a slasher/horror/thriller novel, requires some characters with depth. Even if you don’t like the characters, you need to have some sense that they are real. For good or ill, you need to care what happens to them; otherwise you won’t keep reading to find out. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, but interspersing the main story with unrelated stories from the characters’ pasts only works if it gives the characters more depth or motivation or something that gives the reader a sense of empathy. In the case of Helmet Head, it just gives the characters … well … pasts. Fagan’s early life and Jewish heritage are apparently supposed to be significant in some way. As it turns out, not so much.

Helmet Head reads like a screenplay padded out to make a novel. The pieces just don’t fit together very well. The pacing is uneven. Aside from the occasional overly long asides into the various characters’ back stories, some scenes just don’t seem to make any sense at all. What does Fagan do after the biker gang takes off in pursuit of the monster that has just chopped off the head of their friend and tossed it through the bar window like a basketball? He goes in the back room of the bar and … takes a shower. Freshly showered, he “… stood in the doorway and scanned the room as he’d been trained to do.” This is because the entire bar is a potential crime scene … one in which he’s just taken a shower. And only after that does it occur to him that maybe he should find a vehicle and get the hell out of there and do something, anything.

To be fair, maybe I expected too much. I’m a big fan of Baron’s work on the comic book Nexus, which seamlessly weaves action, drama, humor, and moral conflict into compelling storylines. The most enjoyable aspect of my brief tenure in the comics industry was working with Mike on that book. Unfortunately, those qualities are sadly lacking in Helmet Head.

 

REVIEW: Rock of Ages

The film version of Rock of Ages, has a whiff of cannabalism about it. First, it took a series of 1980s songs and turned them into what has been branded a jukebox musical, since originality no longer matters on Broadway. The success of the stage version – five Tony nominations indicates someone liked it – led to it being optioned for production as a feature film. Broadway used to feed Hollywood source material and the trend has been reversed as risk adverse producers look for sure things, which are not necessarily quality things.

Thus, the film version of the musical based on a disparate collection of rock tunes, which were popular as I advanced through my adult years and saw my tastes changing, means I bring a series of prejudices to watching the film on the just-released Blu-ray. First of all, I am a big fan of many performers in the cast and applaud Tom Cruise for lightening up with several of his recent performances. He’s also backed by Alec Baldwin, Malin Akerman and Paul Giamatti. I also remain fond of Julianne Hough who is a far better dancer and country singer than rocker.

As happens, the movie adaptation was seriously reworked to accommodate the cast rather than cast around the script and soundtrack. Therefore, many numbers were cut, others mashed up, and several reassigned to different characters. This results in a movie largely unrecognizable from the stage version and a lesser effort at that. What made the show edgy and fun is replaced with watered down replicas.

The basic trio of story threads has would-be rock star Sherrie (Hough), arriving in Los Angeles and meeting Drew (Diego Boneta) so you have your love story. Then there’s the Bourbon Room, a doomed club in need of a miracle story that focuses on Dennis (Baldwin) and his fight against a mob led by Catherine Zeta Jones (still sexy), trying to shut it down. His last hope is a kick ass concert from Arsenal, fronted by Stacee Jaxx (Cruise), who is on the verge of going solo. Behind the scenes, his agent, (Giamatti) gums up the works.

Rock is meant to messy and fun and frenetic with high doses of energy. The voltage one expects from the music used, from Foreigner to Pat Benatar leans closer to a Smash rendition and the wattage is cut in half, robbing the movie of the verve the material deserves. It’s not all bad such as the pool table duet between Jaxx and Rolling Stone reporter Constance Sack (Akerman). But when you sing “I Love Rock n Roll”, you should be feeling ready to leap to your feet and dance, not check your watch.

Bad enough the core storylines are predictable as heck, but the movie telegraphs just about everything thanks to direction of Adam Shankman. None of the characters, save Jaxx, stands out, wasting plenty of potential from a stellar cast.

There are plenty of fun moments and Cruise is a revelation all over again. He rarely repeats himself and is excellent here, sabotaged by the lack of raw power around him.

You can watch the theatrical version or the extended version, with 13 more minutes of tedium. The highlight is the cut scene between Jaxx and Sherrie, as they sing “Rock You Like a Hurricane”  and nearly copulate, which smolders better than the rest of the film.

The Warner Home Video release comes as a combo pack with the Blu-ray, DVD, and of course ultraviolet digital. They do a fine job transferring the film and sound to disc so it rocks as best it can.

Poison’s Bret Michaels kicks off the extras with two featurettes: “Rock of Ages: Legends of the Sunset Strip” (29:56) with real rockers Pat Benetar and Sebastian Bach, members of Styx, REO Speedwagon, Twisted Sister, Quiet Riot, Night Ranger, Def Leppard, Winger, Whitesnake, Dokken, Foreigner, Poison, Journey, Warrant, Faster Pussycat, Vixen, Extreme and W.A.S.P. reminiscing about the rock scene in their heyday. “The Stories We Sing” (12:53) brings back many of these rock stars to discuss their inspirations for the greatest hits such as “Sister Christian,” “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” and the perennial “Don’t Stop Believin'”. This one is well worth a look.

There’s also the eight-part “Defining a Decade” (35:34), hosted by Hough and Boleta, that displays some embarrassing awkwardness between them but they manage to take us through the production of the film. You also get a look at the Broadway inspiration which deserved more screen time.

“Any Way You Like It” was re-edited into a full music video starring Mary J. Blige and Constantine Maroulis (who originated the Drew Bolley role on Broadway) but it can be skipped.

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