The Dregs of 2012: Rock of Ages and Savages

Last week I ripped into Snow White and the Huntsman, a paragon of Hollywood's brain dead blockbuster mentality. Well, that film's aggressive mediocrity suddenly seems refreshing. Courtesy of HBO, I viewed Rock of Ages and Savages this weekend, two excretions that redefine awful. If 2012 produced worse movies, please keep them to yourselves.

Rock of Ages (2012, Adam Shankman)

That Rock of Ages sucked was a given; musicals conceived on the same principle as KBox's '80s night don't leave much room for quality. But I wasn't prepared for how aggressively obnoxious it is. This movie spews venomous contempt for its audience, assuming nostalgists would flock to see Foreigner and Pat Benatar mangled by miscast stars. Thankfully, its poor box office proved it wrong.

Oklahoma ingenue Sherri Christian (Julianne Hough) arrives in Hollywood hoping to find music stardom. She lands a job at The Bourbon, a rock hotspot run by Dennis and Lonny (Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand), and falls for bar back Drew (Diego Boneta). Drew gets his big break opening for rocker Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise), but after Drew thinks Sherri slept with Stacee he dumps her, falling under the spell of cynical agent (Paul Giamatti). Sherri starts working as a stripper; Drew fronts a boy band. Somehow factoring in is Patricia Whitmore (Catherine Zeta-Jones), devoutly conservative wife of Los Angeles' Mayor (Bryan Cranston), who nurses a grudge against Stacee.

Rock of Ages is crassly cynical, an endless parade of '80s hits randomly assembled, plot and characters an afterthought. The shallow romance is crossed with inexplicable plot twists; Drew dumps Sherri over a misunderstanding, so of course Sherri becomes a pole dancer. Drew sells out in a painfully contrived arc, while Patricia's villainous machinations go nowhere and amount to nothing. The cast sings and dances well, but without characters to play it's for naught. Maybe onstage it's a blast; the movie's a torture session.

The songs are the main attraction, making their bizarre presentation all the more inexplicable. "Waiting for a Girl Like You" becomes a mawkish duet; Patricia performs "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" juxtaposed with her husband getting spanked (!!!); Sherri's boss (Mary J. Blige) uses "Anyway You Want It" to extoll the virtues of stripping; Stacee Jaxx belts outs "I Want To Know What Love Is" while boinking a Rolling Stone reporter (Malin Akerman). And can we please have a moratorium on "Don't Stop Believin'?" Journey's mawkish ballad sucked to begin with; Glee kicked it to death. Its presentation as a heartfelt love song makes a powerful purgative.

Julianne Hough (Footloose) and Diego Boneta are hopeless; Hough can at least sing, but neither can out-act an Old Navy mannequin. Tom Cruise received inexplicable praise for his extended cameo; he's his usual cocky twat, except drunk. Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand get the movie's one funny moment, coming out to "I Can't Fight This Feeling." Catherine Zeta-Jones is just awful, while Paul Giamatti, Mary J. Blige, Malin Akerman and Bryan Cranston flounder about haplessly. With this cast, Rock of Ages must have been fun to make; too bad that's not conveyed to the audience.

Savages (2012, Oliver Stone)

This brings us to Savages, the latest failure from Oliver Stone. Far removed from his Maestro of Excess days, Stone has produced 17 years of movies overwrought (Natural Born Killers), overreaching (Alexander), banal (World Trade Center) and baffling (W.). Here Stone injects a straight genre flick with overdoses of pretension and overbearing style. It isn't pretty.

A trio of Laguna Beach slackers run a lucrative marijuana business. Chon (Taylor Kitsch) is a mentally-scarred Army veteran; Ben (Aaron Johnson) a stoner surfer; O (Blake Lively) is a rich girl who loves them both. Things get hairy when Mexican kingpin Lado (Benicio Del Torro) contacts them with an enticing offer. This leads to a series of double crosses, kidnapping and shootouts, with Lado's wife (Salma Hayek) and a crooked DEA Agent (John Travolta) further mucking things up.

Remember my reviews of Hanna and Prophecy, where I ragged on auteurs helming genre movies? Here's Exhibit C. Stone returns to the jerky photography and feverish editing that made JFK and Nixon unique, but it only makes Savages incoherent. It's a slack-witted collection of shootouts, decapitations and rape scenes posturing as character study. Our heroes are friendly drug dealers who just want to screw and, like, invent renewable energy and stuff. After a long, bloody denouement, there's a twist more insulting than "It was all a dream." What a brilliant head fake! Bertolt Brecht's got nothing on you, Oliver.

Don't worry, the brilliance isn't confined to the ending. Writers Stone, Shane Salerno and Don Winslow supply dialogue befitting a Steven Seagal flick. "I had orgasms," O narrates a love scene with Chon; "he had wargasms." Whoa. Even better: "Ben was basically Buddhist... Chon was basically a Baddist." That's deep, man. Deeper still are Stone's potshots at Wall Street and the War on Drugs, deeming America "a nation of whores." Apparently this parade of sadistic violence, inept photography and brain-dead plotting is a statement, Stone's Traffic maybe. Both feature drugs, oft-kilter colors and Benicio Del Torro, right?

Taylor Kitsch ruined his shot at stardom with three massive flops in 2012: between this, Battleship and John Carter, he's forfeited any goodwill from TV's Friday Night Lights. Good riddance, as he makes Julianne Hough look like Maggie Smith. Aaron Johnson (Kick-Ass) isn't much better; the talented Blake Lively (The Town) can't overcome the godawful script. Benicio Del Torro and Salma Hayek fare better, playing their villains this side of burlesque. John Travolta shows up long enough to ruin several scenes.

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What wonders does the 2013 summer movie season have in store? Stay tuned to find out!