In The Rocker, Rainn Wilson plays Robert “Fish” Fishman, a heading-over-the-hill slacker still nursing bitterness over being kicked out of a hair metal band in the 1980s right before the group hit it big. When his nephew desperately needs a drummer for his high-school band, Fish gets another chance at fame – at least in his own head. Wilson never gets a fix on this character, certainly not in the manic, obsessive way that, say, Jack Black would have. It can be hard to explain what makes a star, but it’s fairly easy to identify a performer who doesn’t have that mysterious star stuff. Wilson doesn’t have it.
