Rock of Ages, the movie version of the smash Broadway musical, is out this Friday, June 15^th and there are tons of reasons to be stoked about it. Here are five.

We love musical movies

Broadway musicals have been a staple of popular culture and entertainment since forever (maybe?) because they are awesome. Usually, those kinds of musicals have original songs and scores (“show tunes”) which become famous in their own right. I have vivid memories of seeing Les Mis as a kid and being just utterly blown away. But in the last decade or two, we’ve started seeing musicals that take already popular things like the novel Wicked, for example, or the collective discographies of Green Day (American Idiot), Billy Joel (Movin’ Out), and Elvis (All Shook Up). Rock of Ages took that a step further and used a whole collection of rock songs by all different artists. Can’t go wrong with that.

In turn, Hollywood has turned musicals into movies and almost always, they are awesome. Chicago is one of my favorite movies, Moulin Rouge was unbelievable, Mamma Mia was great, the list goes on. The point is, not everyone can just go see a Broadway show whenever they want. But we can go to the movies and see basically the same thing, starring an insane amount of famous people with way better special effects. Which is exactly what Rock of Ages is.

We love the cast

Like I literally just said, we love our celebrities. And Rock of Ages is chock full of them. We have Tom Cruise playing Stacey Jaxx, a famous rock star who just left his band to go solo;  Alec Baldwin as Dennis Dupree, a popular nightclub owner;  Russell Brand as Lonny, the right hand man to Dennis Dupree at the club; Julianne Hough as Sherrie Christian (a small town girl from Kansas/aspiring actress-waitress in LA hoping to make it big); Paul Giamatti as Tom Cruise’s manager, Paul Gill; Catherine Zeta-Jones as the wife of the mayor, bitter because Tom Cruise slept with her in college and never called; Bryan Cranston as her husband, the Mayor. We’ve also got Mary J. Blige in there, as well as Malin Ackerman and Diego Boneta.

As far as star-studded ensemble casts go, you could do worse.

We love the 80’s

Rock of Ages takes place in the 80’s. Now, all decades have their defining merits. The 60’s had hippies, the 70’s had disco, the 90′s had grunge. The 80’s were categorically awesome. It was the decade of big hair, popped collars, Madonna, hair bands, spandex, and shoulder pads. Ronald Reagan single-handedly tore down the Berlin wall. Hollywood gave us Star Wars, Back to the Future, Indiana Jones,  Ferris Bueller and all the Brat Pack movies.  It had some not so great things, too: Chernobyl, the emergence of AIDS, crack was introduced to America. But, on the whole, the 80’s were a kick-ass decade –a decade so popular, VH1 made a killing with several series recounting the awesome nostalgia. It is safe to say that 99.9% of everyone ever likes seeing things that remind them of the “me” decade.

We love 80’s music

Continuing on that trend, 80’s music. I shouldn’t have to explain why 80’s music is awesome. Instead, check out the bands covered in Rock of Ages: Def Leppard, Joan Jett, Journey, Foreigner, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, Poison, Whitesnake, and more.

Even if you don’t like musicals, come on. Every one of those bands/artists is awesome. Get with the program.

We love summer blockbusters that aren’t about beefy action heroes or strippers

2012’s Summer blockbusters have been….manly, to say the least. Not that action hero/beef-cake movies aren’t awesome. The Avengers was killer, Prometheus was killer. The Expendables is due out in August. Magic Mike is going to strip-dance his way into our hearts in a few weeks. They even turned Snow White, a FAIRY TALE, into a bad ass movie.

It is nice to have a light-hearted little musical to cleanse our palates.

So are we looking forward to Rock of Ages? Totally. And so should you. It comes out Friday, June 15^th and I expect it will do pretty good in the box office. Pretty, pretty, pretttttty good (a Curb Your Enthusiasm joke? Sure. Why not, I don’t have to explain myself to you.)