I'd say bring your lighters, but that would start a fire in the theater

I saw Rock of Ages on Broadway, when it started Constantine from American Idol.  And being a child of the 80’s, I loved it.  It wasn’t deep or particularly emotionally moving, but it had all the music from the glorious hairbands I listened to in elementary school and high school.  Warrant. Bon Jovi.  Poison. Journey.

And they gave out fake lighters to hold up during the power ballads.

Despite the front placement of Tom “I’m Running!” Cruise, I am excited for the movie version.  Movie version of Broadway shows don’t always go over so well. While I loved Rent, the movie left me a little cold and seemed a little dated.  Chicago worked almost in spite of Renee Zellweger and had to make some serious changes to accommodate the songs.  The Producers movie version of the musical of the movie version was a mess, even though the musical was genius. Don’t get me started on the movie version of Guys and Dolls, it is just so painful.

Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand are perfectly cast for Rock of Ages even though their hair looks like what someone in 2011 thought 80’s hair looked like…and I’ll even concede that I can see Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx. He certainly bulked up and put on a nice wig for the role. Can’t say much about the two leads as I know nothing about Julianne Hough except that she was in the Footloose remake (ugh) and Diego Boneta is an unknown quantity at this point.

But here is the newest trailer for Rock of Ages, you can judge for yourselves: