ROCK STAR

Directed by Stephen Herek

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Jennifer Aniston,

and Timothy Spall

Playing at Cinemark 12

At one point or another in their lives, everyone has dreamed of becoming a rock star, living the glamorous life of sex, drugs and (of course) rock ‘n’ roll. Rock Star, a comic drama loosely based on the true story of Judas Priest, plays on the fantasy of a fan who gets to front his favorite band.

The legendary story of Judas Priest is that when frontman Rob Halford departed from the band, Tim “Ripper” Owens — who sang lead in a Priest tribute band — got the call to replace him, thus fulfilling the dream that many a fan has held. In Rock Star, directed by Stephen Herek from a script by actor-turned-director John Stockwell (crazy/beautiful), the band is Steel Dragon, an ’80s-era hair metal group in the process of evicting lead singer Bobby Beers (Jason Flemyng) over matters of sexual politics (he’s gay). Meanwhile, Chris Cole (Mark Wahlberg) is ousted from tribute band Blood Pollution and replaced by a talentless rival. Chris wants to perform only note-for-note Dragon tunes, while his lead guitarist wants to explore and write original tunes. Chris and his manager/girlfriend Emily (Jennifer Aniston) are dejected, until Chris gets a fateful phone call. Kirk Cuddy (Dominic West), the lead guitarist and producer for Steel Dragon, has seen a video of Chris performing and wants him to join the band.

Rock Star is a slicker, slighter, hard rock version of last year’s best film, Cameron Crowe’s exuberant poignant coming-of-age rock drama Almost Famous. You could call this Almost Famous Lite. Both films are about relative innocents and music fan that go on tour with the band. Both are steeped in reality (Crowe’s film was autobiographical). Both mix drama with a comic view of the music industry. Only one has a depth of human feeling, and it isn’t the one with big hair and tight leather pants.

Herek’s previous credits (The Mighty Ducks, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Holy Man) don’t exactly scream rock realism, and this film only wades in the shallow end of the pool. The satirical details are by turns limp and easy. Jokes about bottle-blond bimbos throwing themselves at Chris are like shooting fish in a barrel, and casting real life rockers like Stephan Jenkins (Third Eye Blind), Brian Vander Ark (The Verve Pipe), Zakk Wylde (former guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne) and Jeff Pilson (Dokken) doesn’t help. The guests are used more like props. Herek does show some visual style, at least in the music scenes; the movie grows stagnant when it switches over to the heartfelt sequences between Chris and Emily.

I don’t pretend to be a fan of metal, but at least real bands like AC/DC and Def Leppard had more personality than the original tunes composed for this. The songs here — especially the clanker “Stand Up and Shout,” heard about three times — are lifeless and generic, taking a backseat to the far more tuneful soundtrack of real ’80s rockers. Steel Dragon seems less like a mega-selling innovator, than one of the derivative, forgettable cash-in bands that have one hit than fade into obscurity (think Ratt and Winger).

Wahlberg is more appealing here than he was as the fatally bland hero of Tim Burton’s dull Planet of the Apes, though his performance doesn’t equal those he gave in Boogie Nights and Three Kings. Aniston, too, is likable, but it’s a nothing role, a cardboard cutout of a character. Rock Star would like to measure up to the great mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap, but it isn’t content to savage rock excess; it wants us to feel for the plights of Chris and Emily as they descend into this underworld. Too bad the movie is too slickly predictable to move us, or allow the laughs to cut deep (in one unlikely scene, Chris makes himself over as a grunge singer while Emily apparently invents Starbucks). This amp goes all the way up to… 7.