Rock On!!

[tikistitch]

The best ever Hindi grunge band!

Now, after you've stopped laughing....



So, first an admission: I am a VERY bad movie watcher. What often happens nowadays is I'll come home from work, stick in a DVD, and then I'll open Livejournal or Tumblr or YouTube or I'll read a magazine and I'm making dinner or I'm eating dinner. Sometimes I'll even look up and realize I've forgotten to switch on the damned subtitles!

And this one, about a Hindi grunge band?

But I'll admit, with this movie, it all fell away. Despite my best ADHD intentions, I GOT CAUGHT UP IN THIS MOVIE. Yes, really.

What's surprising was a video I purchased mostly for the eye candy value. It's got Arjun Rampal plus Farhan Akhtar from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Oh, here's a bit of trivia regarding ZNMD.



On the right, the iconic poster from ZNMD. We saw this all over India when we were there. (I thought the movie was about how Hrithik Roshan has a great deal of trouble keeping his pants up.) On the left, Lords of Dogtown. IT'S A TOTAL RIP!

BTW, Akhtar refused to appear shirtless in ZNMD, which is weird, because his first scene in Rock On! is a shower scene, and then later he's frolicking on the beach with the rest of them. Like I said, for eye candy, this movie delivers.

But this one really drew me in. We've been here before: a gutsy rock band finds fame, and then somebody gets a swelled head and they break up. I'm not actually sure why this one worked for me when I'd usually drive across town to avoid actors pretending to be rock musicians. The music is cute, but like almost any movie rock band I can think of (save maybe Stillwater from Almost Famous) it ain't rock, and if you watch the songs with subtitles, it's unintentionally hilarious. (Maybe the reason so many lead singers mumble.)

It's very well cast: Rampal plays the lead guitarist, and he really inhabits the part (though he seems to have learned only one guitar chord for miming the solos). Actually, all the guys do, and the band even seems to have a sort of chemistry. Akhtar is charismatic, if a little arrogant as the lead singer, and there's also a snotty drummer and a keyboardist who keeps everyone together. And the stylists have come up with great iconic looks for each of them - two each, actually, as we flip back and forth between ten years ago and the present day. The shifting time element, which could easily have been confusing, works very well. You see the band headed for success, and then the estranged members and their various fortunes, and you wonder what could have happened.

And, yeah, I bought the soundtrack too. It's dumb. But cute.