This Isn’t Spinal Tap, but ‘Rock Star’ Is Genial Fun

On the list of fantasy occupations, being a rock star probably seems the most arbitrary. Anyone who sounds acceptable in the shower has probably daydreamed “that could be me up there, fronting for a hot band, that definitely could be me.”

“Rock Star” takes that idea and has some good-spirited fun with it, at least for a while. A genial look at what happens when a wannabe becomes a headliner, “Rock Star” only stumbles when it decides it has to deliver a lesson about What’s Really Important. As if we needed a Hollywood melodrama to tell us that.

Written by John Stockwell (who wrote and directed the similarly well-meaning “crazy/beautiful”) and directed by veteran middle-of-the-roader Stephen Herek (“Mr. Holland’s Opus,” “101 Dalmatians”), “Rock Star” is classic Hollywood comfort food, intent on delivering well-worn homilies about the pitfalls of fame, the attractions of a normal life, and how being yourself is just the most important rule.

On the other hand, this message is so cast-iron predictable that it can be ignored in favor of the film’s energetic amiability and enthusiastic embracing of cliches. It also helps that “Rock Star” has been especially shrewd in selecting leads Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston.

Unlike his most recent work in Tim Burton’s “Planet of the Apes,” “Rock Star” plays to Wahlberg’s strengths--his hunky regular guy likeability and an ability to play convincingly blue-collar. It also doesn’t hurt that he has a background in music, though his sound was very different from what Wahlberg’s character Chris Cole considers significant music. It is the 1980s in Pittsburgh, and Cole is the lead singer for and driving force behind Blood Pollution. The unkind would call it a cover band, but to Chris those are slanderous words.

Blood Pollution is a “tribute band,” he’ll have you know, an outfit that may practice in the basement of an adult theater showing items like “Das Bootie,” but which in fact follows a higher calling, the re-creation of the music of the greatest rock band ever, the heavy-metal Steel Dragon and its lead singer Bobby Beers. (Resemblances to Judas Priest or Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page are probably not coincidental.)

For this copier repairman by day, who still lives with his tolerant parents, fanaticism in defense of Steel Dragon is no vice. With an encyclopedic knowledge of band trivia and minutiae (“That is so pathetic that you know that,” his brother, the cop, is always telling him), Chris is such a bear for authenticity in dress and presentation that he tends to drive his bandmates a little crazy. Fortunately, his understanding girlfriend Emily (convincingly played by Aniston) is also Blood Pollution’s manager and always available when Chris needs some last-minute piercings.

These early sections are “Rock Star” at its most enjoyable, as the film uses its easy sense of humor to convey what is sometimes lost in rock films, the sense of the fun involved in playing and listening to the music. An innocent despite his music’s bloody overtones, Chris is especially aggrieved when a rival cover band, Black Babylon, tries to steal his thunder, and the resulting parking lot confrontation leads to some amusing moments.

Though it might be said that Chris is only following his bliss, canny readers of movie tea leaves may start to suspect otherwise. First his brother, then his bandmate Rob (Timothy Olyphant), then the loyal Emily all get on his case about his unwillingness to be his own person and even think about writing his own material. “Wouldn’t you want to fail as yourself,” Rob posits, “than succeed as a Bobby Beers clone?”

Funny he should ask. All of a sudden, Chris gets a phone call offering him a shot at the unimaginable: replacing Bobby Beers in the next Steel Dragon tour. True babes in toyland, he and Emily fly out to California and go gaga as they are enveloped by the rock star fantasy life, complete with limos, security, ample drugs and attractive, sexually available girl and boy toys. If it all plays like a straight version of “This Is Spinal Tap,” that is part of the joke. Up to a point.

Anyone who has dipped into celebrity autobiographies knows they’re most interesting as the subject is clawing for stardom and most forgettable once he or she has arrived. Once Chris joins the tour, all the “Behind the Music” crises that afflict him are so earnest and unsurprising that even the presence of Mike Leigh veteran Timothy Spall as the band’s road manager isn’t adequate compensation. Does celebrity have its downside? Does life on the road make it hard to remember what’s important? Is love stronger than heavy metal? No, those are not trick questions.

MPAA rating: R, for language, sexuality and some drug content. Times guidelines: a scene of nipple piercing and some partial nudity.

“Rock Star”

Mark Wahlberg: Chris Cole

Jennifer Aniston: Emily Poule

Jason Flemyng: Bobby Beers

Timothy Olyphant: Rob Malcolm

Timothy Spall: Matts

Dominic West: Kirk Cuddy

In association with Bel-Air Entertainment, a Maysville Pictures/Robert Lawrence production, released by Warner Bros. Director Stephen Herek. Producers Robert Lawrence, Toby Joffe. Executive producers Steven Reuther, George Clooney, Mike Ockrent. Screenplay John Stockwell. Cinematographer Ueli Steiger. Editor Trudy Ship. Costumes Aggie Guerard Rodgers. Music Trevor Rabin. Production design Mayne Berke. Art director Richard Schreiber. Set decorator Casey Hallebeck. Running time: 1 hour, 47 minutes.

In general release.