Take the director of The Full Monty, give him a script by one writer-producer who did a lot of work on The Larry Sanders Show, and another who was just as involved with The Simpsons, cast an ensemble with experience in just about every worthwhile television comedy of the past decade, and what do you get? In this case, a lesson in the law of diminished expectations. A comedy about a middle-aged guy who gets to live the rock star dream that was snatched from him 20 years ago, The Rocker would be merely mediocre if it weren’t such a waste of so much talent.

The central problem is easy to spot: It’s a Jack Black movie with no Jack Black. It’s impossible to believe that it wasn’t written with Black in mind, or that if he read the script he didn’t cast it aside after reading three pages and muttering, “Been there, done that—about 10 times!” There are of course many wonderful movies made with stars who weren’t the first choice, and this could have been a good role for the oddball comic actor Rainn Wilson, of TV’s The Office. But instead of playing to his strengths, the movie turns him into a pale imitation of Jack Black—he even reads his lines the same way. Granted, it might be impossible to read a line like “You don’t ask your parents for permission to ROCK!” without sounding like JB. But Wilson is far too novel a performer to be treated so shabbily. Even worse, the premise—washed up almost-was musician tutors a group of kids in the Rock Star Dream—is ripped from a particular Black movie, The School of Rock. What laughs the movie offers comes from a small handful of rude one-liners and a lot of perfunctory slapstick. But it misses more targets than it hits, and for a movie about getting a second chance to relive the excesses of a touring musician it’s awfully tame.

Discounting a pivotal plot point involving the display of Wilson’s undraped derriere, The Rocker is indistinguishable from something you might see on the Disney Channel any given evening. Give it a half a point for good songs by Chad Fisher (music supervisor for Scrubs), but go rent Still Crazy instead, a much funnier movie about washed up rockers getting a second chance.

—m. faust