47
Metascore
42 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 70Boxoffice MagazinePete HammondBoxoffice MagazinePete HammondBlending a perfect brew of classic '80s songs, big laughs and rockin' performances, director Adam Shankman manages to make this film adaptation of the hit Broadway jukebox musical a red hot summer blast for people who grew up with glam metal - or just can't escape it on the radio.
- 67Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallTampa Bay TimesSteve PersallRock of Ages is nothing but a good time and sometimes less, slogging through the knee-deep hoopla of 1980s nostalgia at a jukebox pace.
- 60Time OutKeith UhlichTime OutKeith UhlichFans of Moulin Rouge–esque repurposing will be in hog heaven. Everyone else will want to hop that midnight train going anywhere pronto.
- 50VarietyJustin ChangVarietyJustin ChangAbsent the infectious live-audience energy of Chris D'Arienzo's legit hit, this affectionate glam-rock-a-thon reps a visually bland staging of frankly insipid material, never tapping into the raucous, go-for-broke energy that would spin the show's cliches into gold, let alone platinum.
- 50Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzArizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzShankman gets enormously entertaining performances from Tom Cruise and Alec Baldwin, so much so that it's a problem: The movie's not about them.
- 50Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanMost of the numbers in Rock of Ages are flatly shot and choreographed, and they look as if they'd been edited together with a meat cleaver. With rare exceptions, they don't channel the excitement of the music - they stultify it.
- He (Shankman) succeeds in draining most of the fun from a vehicle that was all about the winking humor of its flagrant cheesiness.
- 30Village VoiceNick PinkertonVillage VoiceNick PinkertonA cinematic event. It's not every day, after all, that you get to see two great American traditions - guitar/bass/drums rock music and Tin Pan Alley musical theater - so thoroughly, mutually degraded.
- 12Slant MagazineNick SchagerSlant MagazineNick SchagerIf the Adam Shankman film's debasement of its subject into campy kitsch is the unavoidable fate of all culturally dangerous art, that doesn't make it any less palatable.