Late August is the notorious dumping ground for substandard movies.  There are some notable exceptions: Superbad, The 40 Year Old Virgin, and The Sixth Sense come to mind.  But more often than not, these films are being dumped at the end of the summer for a reason.  The Rocker, starring The Office’s Rainn Wilson, is a late August trifle that’s better than most end-of-summer clearance items but doesn’t quite possess the charm of School Of Rock, a movie that it desperately hopes to be when it grows up.

Rainn Wilson plays Fish, a drummer in the up-and-coming local hair band Vesuvius circa 1986.  Just as the band is about to land a record deal, they are presented with a Faustian choice: keep their drummer and lose their record deal or replace Fish with the nephew of the record label’s CEO and become big rock stars.  The band grabs the record deal and goes on to be huge stars, leaving Fish to work the 9 to 5 drudgery of a call center. 

Fast forward 20 years or so; Vesuvius has become bigger than Bon Jovi and Van Halen combined.  Fish is resigned to working the 9-to-5 drudgery of a call center.  Fish has sworn off drumming and is wallowing in his own misery.  When a co-worker unknowingly taunts him with the new Vesuvius CD, Fish snaps and ends up unemployed.  He moves in with his sister and begrudgingly ends up joining his teenage nephew’s rock band.  As he teaches them to rock, they teach him to let go of the past.

Rainn Wilson, who is inspired on The Office, feels more like a poor man’s Jack Black here.  Perhaps it’s because the premise hues so closely to Black’s break-through vehicle, School Of Rock.  There are some enjoyable moments: Jason Sudeikis as a record label executive is funny and Rainn Wilson does have some funny moments.  Josh Gad (as Fish’s nephew) is funny, but can be a little off-putting do to the fact that he looks so much like Superbad’s Jonah Hill.  His character is nothing like Hill’s Superbad character and his performance is totally different, but it seems somewhat obvious why he was cast, especially since a fellow band member is played by Emma Stone (the love interest from Superbad).

Unlike most comedies of late, The Rocker actually gets better in the second half.  Once it finds its footing and establishes its characters, the film actually scores some pretty good laughs.  Unfortunately, most of the laughs in the first half are derived almost exclusively from Rainn Wilson getting hit by things or falling…or falling after being hit by things.

Ultimately, the movie seems like a really good straight-to-Nickelodeon release but a not-quite-there theatrical release. 

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being School Of Rock and 1 being Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Forever, The Rocker gets a 6.