Cast: Farhan Akhtar, Arjun Rampal, Purab Kohli, Luke Kenny, Prachi Desai, Shahana Goswami

Director: Abhishek Kapoor

With it’s sequel ‘Rock On – 2’ coming up on 11^th November, we thought of featuring the first movie that had made waves when it was released.

Upon its release, the film had a bagful of mixed emotions. While initially the promotion was relatively low key, the movie was one of a kind. Rock music was never explored in Bollywood, the film had a debutant actor Farhan Akhtar, not many knew of its subject and the director was not big time who had hit material before him.

But all this changed the moment the film released. To say it very simply – The movie literally rocked audiences all over the country. The negatives became positive and success loomed large.

Simply put, ‘Rock on’ is the story of 4 boys who put together a band called ‘Magik’ something that the country has ever seen. But like all musicians who want to make it big, Magik don’t have the foundation to make it really big. Ten years down the line fate conspires to bring the quartet back together and set them on a journey back to where they left off. The movie has kept intact the usual Bollywood-Masala-Filmy style ending.

The film comes in a two DVD pack with the film's duration being 144 minutes and a second DVD that has special features like Audio commentary with Abhishek Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar and Jason West, ‘The Making Of ‘Rock On’, 'Pichle Saat Dino Mein' music video, Bonus Tracks – like the full length version of songs like 'Zehreelay', 'Dandia', 'Musafir', and 'A New Day' performed by Shaa'ir + Func.

There’s also a sure way to keep you engaged after you have seen the film by checking out the Deleted Scenes. There are 10 minutes of deleted scenes in the movie and the highlight of this feature is that snippets from the scene preceding and following these deleted scenes have been added as well to give audience a complete context of the scene. Moving further to special features, for those who simply love the punchy rock songs, there is an option of singing along with the Karaoke tracks for all songs. The subtitles appear as well to facilitate you to sing along. In addition, ring tone download details for each of the songs across all mobile networks ensures that the popularity of the songs is kept alive for months to come.

Definitely one of the best Bollywood movies of 2008 and for music lovers read rock music lovers, this is the ultimate treat. Looking out for more such films, instead of the item song films shown these days.

Rating: ****

-- Reviewed by Verus Ferreira