You’d be better off renting “Eddie and the Cruisers” (1983) than slogging through this latest, far more dire recycling of the same rock clichés. At least the earlier film has Tom Berenger, Joe Pantoliano, Ellen Barkin and a Springsteen-sound-alike score by Beaver Brown that made it a huge hit on VHS.
The title “The Perfect Age of Rock ‘n’ Roll” refers to 27, the age when Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and, most recently, Amy Winehouse prematurely shuffled off their mortal coils. It’s also the age of the two protagonists (self-destructive Kevin Zegers and more-centered Jason Ritter), rockers and childhood pals uneasily reunited for a 1991 cross-country road trip after the former’s solo album founders.
Drearily framed by a 20-years-later interview conducted by Lukas Haas (who is no Ellen Barkin), Scott Rosenbaum’s dull little vanity production goes precisely nowhere interesting, not even with Peter Fonda on board as a road manager. It’s the kind of movie where people say things like, “I was on this dysfunctional family road trip down a road that didn’t even exist.” Know the feeling.