This film tells the story of a guitarist who got thrown out of a band that subsequently becomes super famous. He lives with anger for the next twenty years. All is changed when he gets his fame unexpectedly in an unlikely band."The Rocker" is a fun comedy. It got me giggling a few times due to silly jokes. I like Christina Applegate's character, I think she's quite fun and lively because of her character's history of being in a band. The subplot of forgiveness and giving yourself a chance to be happy is a good message as well. By the way, Bradley Cooper fans beware, he has only got a very small role in the film, speaking only one line. Though I'll probably not remember it after a few months, I enjoyed watching this brain off film.

The Rocker (2008): Dir: Peter Cattaneo / Cast: Rainn Wilson, Christina Applegate, Teddy Geiger, Emma Stone, Josh Gad: Rock and roll comedy about high energy, which is something the screenplay doesn't possess much of. After twenty years Rainn Wilson is still bitter over the rejection of a band that found fame. When he accepts an offer to drum in his nephew's band it leads to record deals, videos, tours, and serious facts. From director Peter Cattaneo with a decent setup and rewarding ending. This is all a payoff to the talent of Wilson who plays off his youth unaware of physical limitations. Unfortunately this is a major setback for Cattaneo whose previous film The Full Monty was far more innovative and received greater acclaim. While Rainn carries the film Christina Applegate as a mother is wasted. Her prime function is to lecture him while leaving viewers with the obvious belief that she actually likes him. Teddy Geiger plays that sour faced band member who needs to be told that he has talent before he arrives where viewers already were an hour ago. Emma Stone plays a female band member and that is pretty much the height of her involvement. For a superior film I recommend the far superior and funnier This is Spinal Tap. The film settles for B movie appeal as oppose to examining the lifestyles therefore it doesn't rock as hard as it should. Score: 2 ½ / 10

There's a scene in Peter Cattaneo's THE ROCKER in which the main character (Rainn Wilson's sort of version of "rocker Jack Black", Robert Fishman aka Fish) correctly puts the, as he call it, "drive test" as a true indicator if a song does or does not work. I mean, who doesn't love to drive with a badass tune playing in the car? Who doesn't love to drive to some great The Doors album? Or to some killer Motörhead tunes and feel, like Fish says, "on top of the world"? Here Fish is out there driving together with one of his band-mates (Teddy Geiger's character Curtis). They will test a song Curtis wrote. For them the song does work, does rock, and does make you feel like you're sitting on top of the world. But if a movie with as a title like THE ROCKER says that a song like the one Curtis wrote totally rocks, something is pretty darn wrong. Nobody who truly loves rock music will drive to that song and f****** rock! Probably in every single review of this movie we have a comparison with Richard Linklater's THE SCHOOL OF ROCK. If you still wonder why, well I just say to you that Wilson's character is a frustrated rocker who now will find a new chance with a band of kids. Hell, it actually begins in the EXACT same way (with the main character being kicked out of a band) and ends in the… well enough with the spoilers. To finish my "drive test" point, here a real problem is that the kids don't rock (they are not really *kids* though, but adolescents). The music is closer to the Jonas Brothers than to The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Cream, AC/DC, or any of the other great rock bands that THE SCHOOL OF ROCK paid homage to. And certainly that homage thing was one of the reasons why that 2003 Linklater movie was a real blast. Yes, there's only one true rocker here, and Wilson as Fish really is good, darn good fun (just read again Fish's dialog I put as the summary!), but in the end he just can't help the *just plain unmemorable* rest of the movie. Also, in the end everyone sort of forgot that Fish was a real rocker, you know, he *has* to be around a so-so cast of kids, damn Jane Lynch playing the un-cool serious character (his husband was funny, though), enough said. A mixed bag, the kid of thing that makes you say, in the most convinced way, the "I will not watch this again".

I had a blast watching this movie, I thought it was extremely funny and very entertaining. The main character played by Rainn Wilson was the best thing about this movie. Of course I've seen this kind of stories a million times in other movies but there just was something about this movie that made me like it more than the other ones, I guess I'm feeling more sympathy for the often misunderstood characters. Other than that I think that it's always entertaining to watch an awkward person going by his/her strange existence. This is probably one of my favorite comedy movies this year, it's definitely one to watch.