Paying Heed to One's Inner Mullet

The other night I took a trip back in time.  Two friends and I set the wayback machine (remember Mr. Peabody and Sherman?) to 1987 and relived all the big hair, shoulder pads and rock n’ roll that the 80’s had to offer.  We were able to achieve this quite simply: we bought a ticket to the new movie “Rock of Ages”.

If you’re not familiar with the film, it’s based on the hit Broadway show of the same name.  The film’s plot is classic:  Boy meets girl.  Boy and girl fall in love.  Boy loses girl.  Boy and girl reunite.  It may all sound pretty tame, but when you mix it with the costumes, scenery and music from the 80’s, it makes for an entertaining two hours. And when you match it up against that other recent 80’s-themed film, the dismal “Hot Tub Time Machine”, it’s a masterpiece.

I was thankful that my friends wanted to see the film because my husband had no interest at all.  During the 80’s, he was listening to The Grateful Dead and Eric Clapton while I was enjoying tracks from Foreigner, Journey, REO Speedwagon and the other nine albums I received for a penny from Columbia Music House.  My husband cringed when he saw the “Rock of Ages” trailer, wincing at Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’’, Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” and the one song he considers the most offensive and heinous of all:  Starships’ “We Built This City (on Rock and Roll).  As a longtime fan of Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane, he can’t stand to listen to what he considers the worst sell-out of all time.  “It’s not just that the song is so terrible, “he explains, “It’s when you look at where the band began and what they evolved into...it’s unbearable.”

So I happily went to the theater with two friends instead.  I’m a fan of musicals, both in the theater and on film, and I had seen the trailer many times, so I knew what to expect when the lights dimmed and the opening scene began.  My friends, on the other hand, were not as in tune.  When the main character began singing “Sister Christian” and her fellow bus passengers joined in, both friends leaned over to me and whispered loudly, ‘Oh my gosh, is this a MUSICAL?”  One groaned while the other whispered, “Oh no, this is awful.”  I reassured them that yes, this was a musical but that there would also be dialogue.

Fortunately, they were able to overcome their aversion to people bursting into song.  We laughed loud and often over the fashions, hairstyles and props that are no longer part of our culture: Cell phones the size of bricks. A wall of hair constructed with Aqua Net hairspray. Bedazzled fanny packs and jean jacket vests. In one early scene, the boy and girl visit Tower Records, strolling through aisles of vinyl albums. Some things brought back painful memories, like bad spiral perms and t-shirts with shoulder pads, prairie dresses, animal print leggings and Farrah Fawcett wings.  I remember attempting the latter, which was a complete disaster since my hair was short and curly and I had yet to discover the benefits of hair product.  Imagine James Caan with the edges of his ‘fro curled back and you get the idea of what my efforts yielded.

“Rock of Ages” seems to ignore most of the other music from that era.  Androgynous-looking bands like Boy George and Culture Club, Adam Ant and Kajagoogoo are nowhere to be seen.  No one sports a Flock of Seagulls asymmetrical hairdo. It’s all leather pants, bare chests and flashing devil horns.  Then again, the film is titled “Rock of Ages”, not “New Wave of Ages”, which would be awkward.

The biggest kick was watching Tom Cruise nail his performance as Stacee Jaxx, the boozy, burned out, rock god whose years of fame and adulation have left him numb. My biggest complaint with Tom Cruise is that I always feel as if I’m watching Tom Cruise and not the character he’s supposed to be playing.  Stacee Jaxx is a role that winks at Cruise’s own stratospheric fame and Cruise runs with it.  His scenes are some of the most entertaining.

While there are many things I’d like to forget about the 80’s, there are many more I’d like to remember and “Rock of Ages” provides them in abundance.  I don’t know what younger audience members will make of it.  Perhaps they’ll see it as a more retro version of Disney’s “High School Musical” or “Prom”.  But for those of us who survived the 80’s, “Rock of Ages” is, in the immortal words of Poison, “…nothin’ but a good time, and it don’t get better than this”.