HOLLYWOOD - So, Marky Mark, you wanna be a rock 'n' roll star?Sporting a shaggy mane, a nipple ring and an extremely tight pair of leather pants, former rapper Mark Wahlberg cranks up the Marshall amps to 11 this weekend with Rock Star.
Expect a loud debut for this rag-to-riches-to-rags rock epic--destined to knock down surprise No. 1 champ Jeepers Creepers--that capitalizes on Wahlberg's success in Planet of the ApesThree Kings and The Perfect Storm. It's not much of a stretch for Wahlberg to convincingly portray a wide-eyed dreamer who succumbs to a lifestyle based on sex, drugs and heavy metal. That's pretty much what happened to him as Dirk Diggler, Boogie Nights's porn star and aspiring (but untalented) rocker.
A cautionary tale very much in the vein of VH1's Behind the Music series, Rock Star owes its roots, somewhat loosely, to the stranger-than-fiction rise to fame of Judas Priest singer Tim "Ripper" Owens. In 1996, Owens went from singing in a Judas Priest tribute band to replacing original singer Rob Halford. The members of Judas Priest have distanced themselves from Rock Star, no doubt because it depicts its would-be metal god as nothing more than a pawn unable to find his own voice.
Though hardly as poignant as last year's Almost Famous, Rock Star should outperform director Cameron Crowe's semi-autobiographical account of his teenage foray into rock journalism. Almost Famous made only $32.5 million, despite universal good reviews. Rock Star also should hit higher notes than the last major music-themed autobiography, Selena, which opened with $11.6 million in 1997 and eventually made $35.3 million.