A while back, legendary Hard Rock / Heavy Metal band Judas Priest had to replace their notorious lead singer, Rob Halford. To fill his shoes, the band tapped a young unknown who was fronting a Judas Priest cover band. His name is Tim "Ripper" Owens, and you have to think he was happier than a pig in shit to suddenly be fronting his idols.

Rock Star, which was once gonna be called So You Wanna Be A Rock Star when the original, much cooler title of Metal Gods was scrapped, tells the story of Chris "Izzy" Cole, lead singer of Blood Pollution, a tribute band of Steel Dragon, a legendary band who suddenly needs a lead singer after their notorious lead singer Bobby Beers is fired.
Yep, you guessed it, little Chris gets tapped, and suddenly he's singing for his idols, and happier than a pig in shit.

And that's where any true story here ends. Well, there's one other thing, which unfortunately is almost done as a parody, but it would be a bit of a spoiler to mention it, so I'm a shut up now.

Mark Wahlberg, the former hip-hopper himself, Marky Mark, plays our hero, and he does it pretty well. I'm too lazy to do all the research, but apparently he does sing some of his own stuff. He looks kinda weird with the long hair, but that's OK. He has some pretty cheesy dialogue too, but that's not his fault, so that's OK too.
Bummer for him though that this movie was even more disappointing than his summer "blockbuster", PLANET OF THE APES.

Playing "Izzy's" girlfriend / manager is Jennifer Aniston. She's very, very good here…BUT, come on, you knew there'd be a but, she seems outta place. I dunno…I don't see her with Wahlberg, or in the look of the movie (it's set in the 80's, to very early 90's).
I just realized, I could only think of a few Jennifer Aniston movies, and they're all pretty bad really. Poor thing. She's better than that.
Well, maybe she can get a cushy TV job, or hook up with a superstar movie star stud?
Nah.

So aside from miscast actors and bad dialogue, and did I mention a pretty disappointing story with A LOT of cliches, what do we have left?
Well, the reason I wanted to see the movie…the music!

Let me tell you, the music kicked ass!
There was songs from Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Kiss, and Ted Nugent among others, as well as three original songs by the fictional Steel Dragon, that were really, really good, classic 80's metal, but with a slightly harder edge.
In the flick, Blood Pollution, the tribute band, includes Brian Vander Ark, the lead singer of The Verve Pipe, who gave us the hit, "The Freshmen", and there's Blas Elias, the drummer from once popular hair band, Slaughter.
Playing a rival tribute band singer is Stephen Jenkins, singer of Third Eye Blind. He's pretty bad, and looks fucking weird with long locks, but hey, he's had sex with Charlize Theron, so that's OK.

Steel Dragon is more impressive. They consist of Dokken bassist Jeff Pilson, Ozzy Ozbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde, and Jason Bonham, drummer and son of legendary Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. Bonham actually does some acting; minimal, but not bad. Wylde doesn't fit the hair band image at all…they tried to make him look the part, but if you know him at all, you know he's a bad ass redneck hard edge Southern rocker who looks a bit like a mix of the WWF's Stone Cold and Undertaker's characters. Ironically both of those guys have worn Wylde's current bands, Black Label Society's, apparel in the past.

So yeah, as a movie, Rock Star is kinda disappointing, but hey, there's always the soundtrack!
Rock on dude!