I didn't understand this film

Rating: Null/10 (27 July 2004)

Comedy in which lazy, benefit dependent waster is finally brought to book on backrent and illegally assumes his best-friend's position as a substitute teacher as he has no employment prospects of his own and ends up teaching rock music appreciation to privileged ten year olds as a perverse form of wish-fulfillment in order that he can use them to enter a music competition which he hopes will pave his way to fame and fortune although experience and common-sense suggests the dimateric opposite will occur.
What's wrong with this picture? Perhaps the idea that you can teach the spirit of civic and moral rebellion to a group of middle-class private school children who are culturally and intellectually incapable of placing the iconoclastic ethos and social commentary invested in the music into context. The most offensive of these kids, Zack,understandably feels angry with a life of comfort, top dollar education and the certainty of social and economic advantage in the future and so turns to punk - a movement born out of social deprivation, counter-cultural disillusion and the British working class as a focus for his musical muse. Black meanwhile, strutting around the classroom like a one man comic book convention - extols a curriculum of half-bakery, cod-philosophy and rock truisms without ever encouraging the children to find their own musical and spiritual direction. In a typical exchange he tells the kids that rock is about 'giving it to the man' and 'venting your frustrations' but in reality he is pursuing an agenda of wealth and worldwide fame. We realize what he's REALLY saying during a conversation with a awkward, keyboard playing child of oriental origin in which Black notes that 'if you're in a great rock band everyone will want to party with you'. In other words, clearly lacking any other social advantage (looks, a focused work ethic, intelligence) Black only real interest is in making himself popular - the very anthithesis of what Rock is about. Further to this we're forced to endure the spectre of black sexualising younger girls as groupies and tip-toeing dangerously close to the line as he attempts to compensate for his lack of success with women and the inevitable sexual frustration that follows. The whole sorry affair climaxing in an sub-mini pops concert in which Black's training produces songs on the subject on school work and exam results, and they let this man teach music afterwards? I'd lock the b*stard up.
Honestly, what is this film for?