The Rocker

Impressions before seeing it
Being a fan of The Office, I like Rainn Wilson's weirdness (they actually photoshopped the Dwight glasses onto this poster just so people would recognize him, because he doesn't wear glasses in the movie), and the has-been rocker routine worked out fine in School of Rock, so I figured The Rocker would be funny.

How was it?
Okay, so as a movie in general I didn't mind it, but as a comedy I think they marketed it as a Judd Apatow type romp when it isn't. Sometimes it does feel like it's trying to be, though, but not effectively. There were a couple of times where Josh Gad reminded me of Jonah Hill, but it looks like he only got one scene to have an Apatow moment and improvise different versions of a line. There are even a few actresses who have appeared in Apatow productions (Emma Stone, Jane Lynch, Christina Applegate), but their talent is mostly wasted because they don't get many opportunities to be funny. When I review movies I tend to be tougher on comedies (it's harder to make people laugh than it is to simply entertain them, in my opinion), and I tend to expect a certain joke to drama ratio, but in this case I may be able to count the number of chuckles on my hands. It could be partly that it's a rock 'n' roll movie and so the music eats up some time without being funny, but also I just felt that there were a lot of missed opportunities for jokes and even some moments were it looks like someone was trying to be funny but really they only said something bland in a humourous tone (Josh Gad's character was guilty of this a couple of times).

To me the funniest part of the movie was probably Jason Sudeikis as the sleazy band manager, because he delivered most of the funny lines while the rest of the characters tended to go for physical humour, which I only like in moderation. And one quick complaint about the story: I'm not sure if the movie was supposed to take place over a long timeframe but it didn't look like it, and I don't believe that a high school band could become superstars playing a major stadium in such a short period, because my understanding is that it's incredibly hard to break into that sort of thing, especially in a matter of weeks like these kids did.

Recommendation
The Rocker has a few laughs and a few stars, but School of Rock is a better movie with less stars and possibly the same amount of laughs. I was disappointed but I guess I liked it... just barely.