Something For The Kids

Rating: 4/10 (28 September 2004)

"School Of Rock" is cute for what it is, a kid-friendly starring vehicle for emerging comic actor Jack Black. It contains its share of engaging moments, real chuckles, and formulaic moments. The weakness of the central premise keeps SOR from being especially memorable or engaging, but it fills time well.
Director Richard Linklater was my main reason for wanting to see this; he was the guy that made the ultimate youth comedy, "Dazed And Confused," and some other top films I've heard much about. Also, Jack Black was clearly making a sequel in spirit to another great film with rock music at its core, "High Fidelity," which also featured Joan Cusack. Black got many of the big laughs in "High Fidelity," so giving his clueless type-A persona a movie of his own seemed a cool idea.
Black plays Dewey Finn, a struggling musician who believes in the power of classic rock music, i.e. hard rock post-Beatles, pre-MTV. He finds both a job and a prospective vehicle for his musical ambitions as an impostor substitute teacher at a hoity-toity elementary prep school where the students are being loaded down with their parents' transplanted ambitions and are dying for an excuse to cut loose, especially after Finn injects them with his gospel of "sticking it to the Man." Finn has what they need, and they take it and try to run with it, but will the Man come down on him before they get the chance to strut what they got?
Watching this film, I've come to realize I enjoy Black more in smaller doses, like in "High Fidelity" and in "Saving Silverman," where he's either a second banana or has a partner to play off of. His shtick is funny in bursts, and I think he's generally good in this film, but in his scenes with the kids, he grinds his teeth, flaps his arms, and works his eyebrows to the point of distraction. By trying to fill every moment of screen time with some silly business, Black too often comes across often as a physical comedian with nothing to say.
That's not to say Black is bad, just wearying and a bit one-note. He does a better job playing off his young charges than Bill Murray did in his first starring vehicle, "Meatballs," and Murray's gone on to better things. The script leans too heavily on Black to provide the humor, and while Black delivered enough to make this film his career breakout, I suspect it won't have quite the shelf life in five years' time.
The central problem is the story. We are asked to believe that this substitute could really mold this class of yuppie offspring into Led Zeppelin wannabes over a period of weeks without their parents or the school brass catching on. There's no attempt at surrealism, like you might get in a Will Farrell comedy, because the comedy's focus is squarely on pre-pubescent audiences. I admired the film's lack of rudeness, but sometimes it's Olestra-soft. Everything happens too easy.
At least the kids are bright and charming, each in his or her own way. I sense we will be hearing from some of them for a while. And Joan Cusack shines as the stiff-spined school principal with a secret affection for Stevie Nicks music. Her telling a roomful of already-angry parents that she just lost their children is the biggest laugh in the movie.
It's scary realizing the music I grew up with is now as passÃ© as swing with the present generation, and "School of Rock" could have done more with that concept. It could have done more with a lot of things, but for what it is, it's better than a stick in the eye.