The reviews for Rock of Ages are trickling in. Here's an interesting one:

>I don’t care who Tom Cruise sleeps with; man, woman, or beast, it’s his business. I don’t care what religion he worships or what beard he has contracted. Onscreen, he is gay, and I don’t mean that in the homosexual sense. I mean it in the sense that straight people do not have nearly as much fun as Tom Cruise.

>He’s a 50-year-old man coming off the biggest movie of his career ... and he’s singing showtune versions of terrible 80’s rock anthems, and he’s doing it fearlessly.

>Say what you want about his acting skills, say what you want about him as a person, but Tom Cruise tries harder than any guy on the planet to please an audience, and it’s that effort, that zeal, and that determination that seeps into Rock of Ages, turning what is essentially High School Musical 4: The Glam Rock Years into one of the most uncool crowd-pleasing movies of the year.

>Is it bad? Oh, God yes. It’s terrible. But so is Journey. Yet, that doesn’t stop you from belting out “Don’t Stop Believin’” when you’re by yourself driving down the freeway at three in the morning. That’s essentially what Rock of Ages is: It’s Tom Cruise’s Risky Business home-alone dance party writ large and scored by fucking Def Leppard.

>There’s not a less cool movie on the planet. Appreciating it ironically would be like a hipster trying to burn out the sun with a glass of water. It’s pointless. You either hate this movie with every fiber of your overly critical soul, or you check that cynicism at the door and embrace it, fill in the last pocket of your secret shame chamber, and pump your goddamn fist like you don’t give a shit. If you show weakness, if you hide behind your cynicism for even a second, Rock of Ages will eat you up and crush you.

I feel as if I should not see this film, and yet, there is a guilty pleasure in joyously bad cinema.

I would argue the point that he has fun, though. Cruise strikes me as someone who's just desperate to be considered a big deal and does whatever he can to ensure that.

Discuss!