You better Prey for Rock and Roll

Prey for Rock and Roll has all the makings of a stellar rock band movie: an attractive cast, engaging music, and a compelling premise. It poses the ultimate question, "At what point do you give up pursuing your life's dream?" However, the film fails to deliver on a key point: plot. The story of an all-female rock band's quest to hit the "big time", Prey for Rock and Roll should by all means be a good movie.

The film follows Jacki (Gina Gershon) the lead singer of the un-named rock band as she comes closer to her 40th birthday and ponders her own future. Jacki has sought rock and roll stardom since the tender age of 12 but has not yet come close to fulfilling her dream. She works in a tattoo parlor living paycheck to paycheck. Her band, having gone through several former manifestations, is a rag tag group of women hoping to get their big break any day soon.

The band members themselves have been formed using every stereotype of a female rock musician ever created. Faith (Lori Petty), and Sally (Shelly Cole) are lesbian lovers who play lead guitar and drums, respectively. Tracy (Drea De Matteo) IS the female version of Keith Richards complete with frizzed out hair, bloodshot eyes, dirty face, and a nasty drug habit. Jacki, as the band's brave leader, is the true heart of the group as she plays the role of composer, lyricist, and pseudo-spokeswomen/manager. Together the women take on the LA rock scene while carting their own gear and receiving less than $13 each for a gig.

"And the fact that I have to f***-ing lie about my age pisses me off. It's true man. Unless you are young, hip, and look good on the side of a building in a f***-ing designer jeans ad, you're not going to get signed," says Gershon as she narrates the film. Her constant voiceover is annoyingly preachy as she retells her experiences, dispenses advice and agonizes over hitting the big 4-0. Her statement would be valid if Gershon looked anything like your average 40 year old. However she is amazingly gorgeous for any age.

Prey for Rock and Roll continues to create such contradictions for the remainder of the film. While the story is obviously an attempt to strengthen the image of the female rocker, stoutheartedly committed to her music, the message is cheapened it by the inclusion of a rather drawn out love scene between Jacki and her on again off again girlfriend.

Though love scenes can add depth to a story by highlighting emotional tensions, this is not the case in Prey for Rock and Roll. The lesbian love scene is a blatant attempt to bring in an audience interested more in one image-focused scene than the underlying themes that highlight the rest of the film. After their moment together, Jacki's girlfriend disappears from the movie altogether.

The inconsistency of the film's intended message to women can probably be traced back to its director, Alex Steyermark. The director began his career making music videos, a field that emphasizes female sexuality in order to sell a product. This appears to be the case in Rock and Roll as we are drawn in by a seemingly unnecessary love scene.

However, the contradictions in Prey for Rock and Roll go beyond its portrayal of women. As Jacki bemoans growing older, the character does little to demonstrate that she has actually learned anything from her life experiences or matured since her 21st birthday. The character exhibits a juvenile understanding of reality.

In one of the most random scenes thrown into a film, Jacki goes to her mother's house to celebrate her birthday. Her family displays little believable interaction as the scene only exists to rather insensitively reveal that Jacki was sexually abused by her father as a child. After this revelation, the family disappears just as quickly as the girlfriend. The abrupt manner in which the idea is introduced makes sexual abuse seem an afterthought to the rest of the film. How Jacki has changed since her painful experience is not even addressed.

Where the film does deliver, unsurprisingly, is in the music montage scenes. The girls truly rock out with songs written by the screenwriter and real life rock musician Cheri Lovedog. Gershon performs all of the vocals herself and possesses a definite rock star charisma that carries the film. One scene in which the band performs a song about rape was rather poignant and well shot. Here the band did deliver the emotional edge that is lost through the rest of the movie.

Rock and Roll attempts to identify with other gritty indie films like Requiem for a Dream with its portrayal of rape and drug addiction; yet it never delivers the emotional punch of other similar films getting caught between being a movie about music and a movie about musicians.

The film exists solely as a litany of complaints about the music industry until a series of dramatic events turns the girls' rock and roll world upside down. These plot "twists" are so forced that they never become a cohesive story. The audience gets the idea that these events just happen to the character without an overall story arch or adequate character development.

Rock and Roll is a decent film that could be several times better with a little more focus, a solid story, more music and a lot less voiceover narration.