ROCK ON- Keep on

The Title itself is enough to turn away the audiences, considering the past Musical films: Yash, Taal, Zindagi Rocks to name a few. It’s a challenging genre not much experienced. We, in India, are far from Chicago and the Phantom of the Opera but that doesn’t prevent us from making a Musical film of high caliber. Taal was great, but more musical and less film, Zindagi Rocks was pathetic on both grounds. Rock On was a breather, both figuratively and idiomatically. Technical points apart, it was a high level entertainment; the adrenaline pumping department was taken care by the music; pure rock and nothing more! Lyrics, what lyrics? Yes, that’s actually what the Rock music is; the Bollywood rock, till date, has been too soft on ears to be qualified as real Rock. Metallica experimented with the soft rock with Nothing else matters but Metallica has an experience of quite a few years (a euphemism!)

The first half of the film paints a proustien panorama of life even further, it’s a nostalgia lived and relived. These four characters do not only cherish their past, they live in it and except for Aditya and Joe, they are happy to live in it. Proust’s reflections on the “Temps Perdu” mark actions of all the four singers, nostalgic or not, for them, it’s a “Passé qui ne passe pas” (the past that you can’t get rid of).

Another commendable part of the film is that the guitar gets its dignity back. With Dus (Manmohan Desai’s film that never saw the light of the day) and then with Mission Kashmir(Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s film that fell flat at the box office), the director trio of Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy did many beautiful experiments with the guitar that they continued with Dil Chahta hai ( remember Tanhai?). Now, Rock On lifted that torch so as not to let it blow off. ‘Music for the ear’ may be an understatement as it had a plot too although we saw a few reference to the English classical Full Monty, the same sort of camaraderie that holds the guys together and last but not the least, the late entry of the second fiddle on the stage. The music also gave the impression being ‘Anu Malikized’ (you know what I mean!), especially the beginning of Phir Dekhiye that sounded like the beginning of Imaan ka Asar from Kukunoor’s Dor.