The Rocker ( *** )

90 minutes

In theaters August 22, 2008

Rating: PG-13, Comedy

While away from The Office, Rainn Wilson has taken on his first major starring role in a feature film. And, not one to Rainn on his own parade, he comes across as very much on his Rocker.

The Rocker is a family rock-n-roll comedy and a fun ride.

Wilson plays Robert "Fish" Fishman, a drummer whose undeserved misfortune, as the movie opens in Cleveland (home of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum) in 1986, is that he is unceremoniously dumped from his rock band, Vesuvius, at the request of a record company executive (because there's a nephew who would like to be their drummer). This occurs just as Vesuvius is about to erupt, go platinum, and become world-famous.

Twenty years later, Fish, still embittered over the success of Vesuvius, lashes out at a fan of the band at work. Before he knows it, he has lost his job, his girlfriend, and his home. So he moves in with his sister's family. That's when his teenage nephew makes a request of him: he needs a drummer for his high school band, called A.D.D., scheduled to play at the prom. Hey, thinks the ex-drummer, it's not exactly the big time, but he doesn't need to be told to "Go, Fish" twice.

Then, lo and behold -- thanks to a cheeky video posted on YouTube showing a bare-buttocked Fish playing the drums that makes the group an Internet sensation -- A.D.D. goes B.I.G.

Maybe they'll even run into an on-its-way-down Vesuvius while A.D.D. is on its way to the top.

If this sounds a lot like Jack Black's School of Rock (School of The Rocker?) transplanted to high school, well, that wouldn't be far off. Rock-themed Almost Famous and That Thing You Do! also come to mind. But The Rocker finds its own groove and establishes its own idiosyncratic charms.

Director Peter Cattaneo, working from the a witty script by husband-and-wife screenwriters Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky, creates the same kind of appealing and recognizable community subculture that he did in The Full Monty and Lucky Break, helping us to accept the characters and ground them in reality so that their outrageous situation suddenly seems plausible. Or, at least, plausible enough for the suspension of disbelief.

Also impressive are the frequent and effective running sight gags, carefully set up, artfully delivered, and surprisingly funny.

Furthermore, Cattaneo does a splendid job with the well-cast youngsters playing the A.D.D. band members: Josh Gad on keyboard, Emma Stone on bass, and Teddy Geiger on guitar and vocals. And the director gets solid ensemble support from vets Christina Applegate, Jason Sudeikis, Jeff Garlin, Jane Lynch, Jane Krakowski, and -- as the Vesuvius triumvirate -- Will Arnett, Fred Armisen, and Bradley Cooper.

Perhaps best and most surprising of all, he sustains the film's essential innocence and family-values sweetness despite residing somewhere in the sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll arena.

Wilson is fine in his first on-his-shoulders role, understated when he needs to be but mostly way out there, looking justifiably crazed, bull-in-a-china-shop clumsy, and humorously frustrated. He takes to the film's slapstick demands without a hitch, occasionally bumbling his impressive way into Peter Sellers or Steve Martin physical-comedy territory.

With Rainn in the forecast, The Rocker manages to be a lightweight and likable satirical comedy about the music biz and a rock fantasy for aspiring garage-band musicians at the same time.