Tom Cruise's Riskiest Movie Choice Was Also His Biggest Flop

Tom Cruise rightfully gets a lot of credit for putting everything into his work, up to and including death-defying stunts no company should ever insure. The man jumped around the Burj Khalifa, repeatedly launched a motorcycle off a cliff, and hung off the wing of a plane mid-flight.

He’s also known for choosing risky roles that usually pay off. He took the fame from the first Top Gun and Risky Business to prove himself as a dramatic actor in Rain Man, then earned an Oscar nomination for a role that decidedly did not trade on his good looks in Born on the Fourth of July. He scored another nomination playing a sexist creep in Magnolia and delivered his best comedic performance as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.

Say whatever you want about him as a person (and there’s plenty to say), but as an actor, he takes big swings — in his movie choices and in the performances themselves. And they almost always land.

Except once. Tom Cruise wanted to see just how far he could stretch himself by playing yet another asshole… in a musical. And not just any musical. A glam-metal jukebox musical. Though it’s only 13 years old, it’s a movie most people have memory-holed, probably including Tom Cruise. It is the uncoolest movie he’s ever made. He puts everything into it, and it still crashes and burns.

The movie was called Rock of Ages. There’s not a less cool movie on the planet. Appreciating it ironically would be like a hipster trying to extinguish the sun with a glass of water. It’s pointless. You either hated Rock of Ages with every fiber of your overly critical soul, or you checked that cynicism at the door and embraced it.

I embraced every terrible moment.

Rock of Ages, directed by Adam Shankman, centers on a rock club — The Bourbon Room — in 1987. Tom Cruise’s Stacee Jaxx is the burned-out, blitzkrieged lead singer of Arsenal, the biggest rock band on the planet. He’s about to take the stage for the last time before going solo, returning to the club where it all started. That’s the backdrop for everything else. A young, pre-DWTS Julianne Hough plays Sherrie Christian, an Oklahoma girl who steps off the bus in L.A. and immediately gets a job at the Bourbon Room after Drew (Diego Boneta) — a bartender and aspiring rock star — rescues her from a mugging. They supply the small-town girl/big-city boy romance at the center of Rock of Ages.

Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin’s Dennis Dupree — in a terrible wig — and his right-hand man Lonny (Russell Brand, god) try to keep the Bourbon Room afloat amid religious protests led by the mayor’s (Bryan Cranston) wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones), who has a personal vendetta against Stacee Jaxx. Cranston’s mayor is into rough sex-play, his wife is into Twisted Sister, and Dennis and Lonny are into each other. Yes, Russell Brand and Alec Baldwin play gay lovers (and if their awful REO Speedwagon duet doesn’t win you over, you have no soul).

But the real draw of Rock of Ages is Tom Cruise, laying it all out there. He’s never been more vulnerable as an actor, and wow, did it backfire. It’s hard not to appreciate the effort, but it’s… not good. And yet I still loved it. Here he is doing Def Leppard’s crowd-pleaser “Pour Some Sugar on Me,” overpronouncing every lyric and looking like Upper West Side Glen Danzig. I love it unashamedly.

Does it get worse? Yes, yes it does. Cruise’s earnest attempt at playing a washed-up burnout is laughable, and all the production value and autotune in the world can’t save his rendition of “Wanted Dead or Alive.” Did I still love it? Absolutely. Also, Stacee Jaxx is not British. Why does he enunciate like one? He’s not “Wanted” Dead or Alive. He’s wOn-TED Dead or Alive. And when he takes off his jacket and struts? Tom Cruise is a lot of things. He is not a man with an ounce of rizz.

How does he mess up “Rock them all” so badly?! Has he never heard the song?!

But no jukebox musical is complete without Journey. Pro tip: even with a cowboy hat to distract us, do not pair Tom Cruise with people who can actually sing, like Julianne Hough and especially Mary J. Blige. What were you people thinking?

And that, folks, is Rock of Ages — maybe the only Tom Cruise movie that didn’t make its budget back and the guiltiest pleasure of all guilty pleasures.