Tom Cruise is at it again (that is, grossing me out) in some new Rock of Ages stills from Collider. Sure, I’ll admit to being rather unkind towards Tom as he rocked out in two awful trailers, and things have gotten particularly ugly with the arrival of Tom’s tattooed W mag cover and embarrassing full shoot. To reiterate, I’m not terribly crazy about Tom as a person (it’s a Xenu thing), but I legitimately take great issue with the fact that he’s playing Stacee Jaxx in a very unironic manner, which is not how the character is portrayed in the Broadway show.
Tom himself has even bragged about reinventing the Stacee role as a serious rock star and insisting that his version of the character be accompanied by a monkey called “Hey Man.” In fact, Tom is so bloody serious about this role that he prepared for the role by dancing and singing ten hours per day, and (last summer) he even took advantage of some down time to rock out on a hotel balcony to universal cringes. So am I overreacting a bit to Tom’s overzealous nature in this role? Well just wait until he ruins A Star is Born as well. Here are those aforementioned new Rock of Ages stills. In this one, poor Paul Giamatti is being forced to feel up Tom’s rock star moobs.
In some of the other stills, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are camping it up as the proprietors of the club where Stacee Jaxx performs. Clearly, Baldwin and Brand understand the cheese factor involved with this movie. Too bad they couldn’t both teach Tom a few things, but nobody teaches Tom anything. That’s the main problem I see with this film thus far — director Adam Shankman was just so thrilled to have Tom Cruise in his little movie that he neglected to give his lead actor some, you know, direction.
Julianne Hough is digging the hairspray in this movie. Nice attention to detail with the rusty sinks. She’s still not a leading lady though.
Diego Bonita: I still don’t get it.
Catherine Zeta-Jones appears to be truly embracing her role as an anti-rock ‘n’ roll activist. I would hope that she’s merely collecting a paycheck here and didn’t sign on for the “art” factor.
Images courtesy of Collider
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