Rock Star

I really enjoyed this one, which surprised me quite a bit. It doesn’t pretend to be particularly deep, so as long as you don’t go in expecting a Nobel Prize winning theory on biomechanics, you should be pleasantly entertained for an hour and a half. Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston do a great job in the lead roles. It is a fun movie to watch when you don’t want to think about anything too heavy. (No pun on the “heavy metal” theme intended.) I don’t even like heavy metal, but it didn’t really matter. The story is strong enough to make up for the bad music. Interesting trivia fact: Mark Wahlberg has tattoos on a number of body parts, so they had to do some serious make up (and post-edit special effects coverups) every time he showed any skin. He shows his chest quite a bit, and his chest has a big rosary tattooed on it, but the director decided that was too “hiphop”, so they had to cover it up every time. Also, one of the characters wore a Harley Davidson shirt, but the film-makers weren’t able to get permission to show the HD logo, so they had to go in afterwards and re-create the guy’s shirt in every scene. (****)