Rock Star is the movie about the young Chris (Mark Wahlberg), who idolates the Heavy Metal band Steel Dragon and sings in a Steel Dragon tribute band (from whence the immortal comment “We’re not a cover band, we’re a tribute band!” arises). The first half or so of the movie portrays Chris’ day to day life in his home town, where he lives with his parents, fixes copiers for a living, and rehearses with his band.

But there’s a serpent in Eden. The rest of the band is getting tired of only playing Steel Dragon songs note by note, and want to experiment more and also write their own material. This does not sit well with Chris; he’s thrown out of the band, but Fortune is fickle, and through some rather outragously lucky circumstances he soon finds himself replacing the lead singer of Steel Dragon.

Where the first half of the movie was a relatively fond (but far from servile) portrayal of certain kinds of youth culture, the second half does pretty much the same for the music scene of the 1980s. It takes us on a ride through the deepest abyss of decadence and lack of so-called artistic integrity, and while the movie never goes to any depths in its examinations, it displays an impressive broadness of theme, and manages to stay away from the worst simplifications. The seemingly mindless party animal that plays the bass in Steel Dragon, for example, has a line where he (sort of) eloquently formulates the credo and the spirit of 80s Heavy:

“Look, you start out with the best intentions but theres just so much pussy coming at you every single day that finally it wears you down. You see you’ve got all these birds out there dreaming about having it off with you and that makes the guys wanna be you, and its the guys who buy the records. So if the chicks dont want you the guys are gone. You live the fantasy other people only dream about, so my advice to you is dream big and live the life.”

On the other side, you’ve got the guitarist in Chris’ tribute band, who asks Chris if he wouldn’t rather live and fail as himself than being a copy of someone else. The whole movie’s permeated with these nice threads of identity and integrity, and when this finally concludes with Chris and his old tribute band guitarist mate forming a grunge band, it all feels very full circle’y.

All in all, Rock Star is a great little portrayal of a facet of a decade, as well as a sociological study of this rather peculiar subculture. Add to all this thematic stuff that it’s both well written and well acted (Mark Wahlberg does a great job, as mentioned, as does Jennifer Aniston, Jason Flemyng, Dominic West and last but not least Timothy Spall), and it’s a movie I can recommend highly to just about anyone, although people with a certain fascination with musical subcultures probably will get the most enjoyment out of it.

8.5/10.