The Rocker

Cert 12A
  1. The Rocker
  2. Production year: 2008
  3. Country: USA
  4. Cert (UK): 12A
  5. Runtime: 102 mins
  6. Directors: Peter Cattaneo
  7. Cast: Christina Applegate, Emma Stone, Jane Krakowski, Jeff Garlin, Jon Cor, Josh Gad, Rainn Wilson, Teddy Geiger, Will Arnett
  8. More on this film

Directed by Peter Cattaneo, best known for The Full Monty, The Rocker is another film about a former rock star making a comeback. Like Pete Best, the Beatles drummer replaced by Ringo Starr, Robert 'Fish' Fishman (Rainn Wilson), the wild drummer of Vesuvius, the next-big-thing heavy metal band in 1986, is dumped by his ambitious colleagues to secure a record contract. Twenty years later, sacked from his dead-end job, Fish does a high school gig with his 18-year-old nephew's band, ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), and is on his way to redemption and rehabilitation. Occasionally funny and entirely predictable, the film can't decide whether it's a send-up or a celebration of rock culture and the music business. And partly because Wilson hasn't got the ferocious presence of Jack Black, it lacks the drive of the not-dissimilar School of Rock. At the end there's a credit stating that Pete Best is played by himself, which, as he doesn't appear, is either some sort of joke or another sad rejection.

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