Pedestrian movie with a moment or two of pleasure

Rating: 4/10 (1 January 2005)

Having enjoyed Jack Black's performance as a rock music obsessive in Stephen Frears' "High Fidelity", I had relatively high hopes for this movie. Alas they were not met. Thinking about it, the blame can really be laid solely at director Richard Linklater's feet, because the cast struggle gamely to rise above a leaden parade of clichÃ©d and stereotyped characters and settings, failing most of the time, alas. Only at the very climax - obviously enough, a 'Battle Of The Bands' talent contest -was there a sense of any excitement, and it was hard to judge whether that was because of the music or because of the audience of actors acting excitedly. As a fan of rock music, I certainly found much to argue with from a musical point of view - 'rock' here was clearly defined in terms of 1970s' arena rock. This may play to a large and wealthy demographic, and thus elicit maximal box-office receipts, but any film that claims 'School Of Rock' as its title and fails to mention either Elvis Presley or The Beatles (if it did, I missed it) is dishing out Rock History-Lite. Ironically, the cookie-cutter anonymous song that Black and his school band cobble together freely borrows the 'Oooh-la-la' chorus from The Beatles' "You Won't See Me" - and that made me cringe rather than smile. A few asides verbally and musically to the punk rock movement were made to bolster 'the stick it to The Man' philosophy that Black's character tried to get across, but it was all style (and not interesting style) and no substance here. All in all, a great disappointment.