Rock Star (2001)

Rock Star arrives from 2001, directed by Stephen Herek, and it concerns a Pittsburgh photocopier technician named Chris Cole who sings in a Steel Dragon tribute band until the actual Steel Dragon hires him to replace its fading frontman. Mark Wahlberg plays the role with a certain sweaty earnestness. The film was inspired, loosely, by the real ascent of Tim Owens, though the producers sanded the specifics down into a fable about selling out and buying back in. It grossed nineteen million dollars against a budget near fifty, which is its own kind of review.

The cultural inventory here is thin. The cast is white, the subculture is white, and the movie has no interest in commenting on either fact. Jennifer Aniston's Emily exists to wait, forgive, and be forgotten in a Seattle hotel room while the hero is too drunk to remember her name. She receives no arc of her own, only patience. The real Judas Priest had a gay frontman, and the film declines to notice, preferring its groupies and its leather. There is a faint complaint about the corporate machinery that flattens an artist's ideas into the Steel Dragon thing, but it resolves as a story about personal integrity, not economics. Nobody is asked to redistribute anything.

What remains is a mild sermon on authenticity, delivered in the language of guitar solos. The film believes in staying true to yourself, which is a fine sentiment and an old one, and it asks nothing harder of its audience than that. The period detail is competent. The rebellion is decorative. We have seen this movie many times, and it has never once changed the world.

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