Rock of Ages isn't very rock 'n' roll; the adapted stage musical is more like "highly processed cheese," according to Slate's Dana Stevens. Still, it offers some impressive performances—especially from Tom Cruise as a hair-metal deity.
- Director Adam Shankman "has vacuumed his rock-scene simulacrum of anything recognizably rock, including the lust, juice, heat, bad behavior, and excesses that characterize its real-life analogue," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "It looks like Disneyland and sounds, well, like a bad Broadway musical, with all the power belting and jazz-hand choreography that implies."