ajk08 This movie is as close as you can get to 90 minutes of feel good film. I'm a fan of Rainn Wilson from (obviously) The Office as well as Super and My Super ex girl fired which are also pretty decent films. Its a shame this bombed at the box office because it really had the potential to be a really GOOD summer movie. Everyone in the cast does a great job. All the band members have their own 'story' and explored personality which makes you feel much more invested and care about whats actually happening to them. There's 1 or 2 laugh out loud moments with Rainns physical comedy but most of all this is a film to smile and feel good about. Nothing makes you cringe or think that obviously isn't funny and i would definitely recommend it.

Scott LeBrun After achieving fame on the TV series 'The Office', actor Rainn Wilson here shows himself capable of carrying a feature film, in this vehicle. It's got some heart as well as some degree of silliness, and it doesn't conclude as well as one might like, but it does do its job, and keep entertaining the viewer for a well paced 103 minutes.Wilson indeed is playing the kind of part one could also easily see Jack Black playing: Robert "Fish" Fishman, wildman drummer for Vesuvius, a rock band on the rise, whose bandmates cruelly kick him out just before what could have been a life changing event. He spends the next 20 years bearing a grudge and deeply resenting his lot in life when an opportunity presents itself. Fish's nephew Matt (Josh Gad) is keyboardist for a high school band named A.D.D., and they need to replace their drummer in time for the prom.In record time, this band begins to take off, and the members - also including singer / guitarist / creative force Curtis (Teddy Geiger) and bass player Amelia (Emma Stone) - find themselves having to deal with a crazed Fish desperate to live out all the decadent rock 'n' roll dreams he never got to realize before.Ultimately, this is a pretty, if not entirely, predictable affair. At least it doesn't act as if a romance between Fish and Curtis's hottie mom Kim (Christina Applegate) is inevitable. It goes utterly over the top in the early going (that bit with the incensed Fish pursuing his Vesuvius bandmates is priceless), but for most of the rest of the picture, it's a little more down to Earth.Wilson proves to be fearless (witness the naked drummer routine) and delivers a performance of true enthusiasm. His castmates are equally appealing. Jeff Garlin has his moments playing Fish's brother; also co-starring are Jane Lynch, Jason Sudeikis, and Howard Hesseman; it's hilarious to see Will Arnett, Bradley Cooper, and Fred Armisen in long hair wigs as they portray the other members of Vesuvius (and affect ridiculous faux English accents near the end). Appropriately enough, Pete Best, the man infamous for being the drummer fired from the Beatles, has a cameo.Overall "The Rocker" is likable enough and amusing enough to qualify as agreeable entertainment while it lasts. It may not be terribly memorable, but it is quite easy to take.Seven out of 10.

Maniac-9 I get the idea that the studios after the success of The School of Rock movie wanted to make their own version of a Rock N' Roll themed movie, but they obviously struck out here. First of all the band they chose to be the star of the movie is an Emo style band and they make the villainous evil popular band that you're supposed to hate a hard rock band. I'm sorry but if you go to a rock concert anywhere and you have the choice to listening to either an emo band play or a hard rock band the harder band is going to win out every time. And you can tell that the studio who greenlit this was hoping to have Jack Black play the lead role but when he turned them down they decided to go with Rainn Wilson instead. I like Wilson as Dwight Schrute but it's kind of hard to buy him as a rock n' roll musician.

RainDogJr There's a scene in Peter Cattaneo's THE ROCKER in which the main character (Rainn Wilson's sort of version of "rocker Jack Black", Robert Fishman aka Fish) correctly puts the, as he call it, "drive test" as a true indicator if a song does or does not work. I mean, who doesn't love to drive with a badass tune playing in the car? Who doesn't love to drive to some great The Doors album? Or to some killer Motörhead tunes and feel, like Fish says, "on top of the world"? Here Fish is out there driving together with one of his band-mates (Teddy Geiger's character Curtis). They will test a song Curtis wrote. For them the song does work, does rock, and does make you feel like you're sitting on top of the world. But if a movie with as a title like THE ROCKER says that a song like the one Curtis wrote totally rocks, something is pretty darn wrong. Nobody who truly loves rock music will drive to that song and f****** rock! Probably in every single review of this movie we have a comparison with Richard Linklater's THE SCHOOL OF ROCK. If you still wonder why, well I just say to you that Wilson's character is a frustrated rocker who now will find a new chance with a band of kids. Hell, it actually begins in the EXACT same way (with the main character being kicked out of a band) and ends in the… well enough with the spoilers. To finish my "drive test" point, here a real problem is that the kids don't rock (they are not really *kids* though, but adolescents). The music is closer to the Jonas Brothers than to The Doors, Led Zeppelin, Cream, AC/DC, or any of the other great rock bands that THE SCHOOL OF ROCK paid homage to. And certainly that homage thing was one of the reasons why that 2003 Linklater movie was a real blast. Yes, there's only one true rocker here, and Wilson as Fish really is good, darn good fun (just read again Fish's dialog I put as the summary!), but in the end he just can't help the *just plain unmemorable* rest of the movie. Also, in the end everyone sort of forgot that Fish was a real rocker, you know, he *has* to be around a so-so cast of kids, damn Jane Lynch playing the un-cool serious character (his husband was funny, though), enough said. A mixed bag, the kid of thing that makes you say, in the most convinced way, the "I will not watch this again".