School of Puke

Rating: 1/10 (11 March 2007)

I'm glad to read the other 'hated it' reviews and see that other people were as annoyed by this film as I was! I only caught it on TV, so didn't actually waste any money on it. I was able to walk away from the TV too .. another great plus! The only reason I didn't change channels is because other people in the room wanted to watch it (they also concluded it was lame, by the way). So what is wrong with this movie? Well quite a lot, actually. As other people have mentioned, the script is almost a direct rip off of Sister Act II and other 'conservative people rock out in the end' type movies. This makes it tiresome and banal, as one keeps anticipating an unexpected digression from cliché that never actually happens.
But I guess the worst problem in this movie can be summed up in two words - Jack Black! What a hyped up, overly energetic, frustrated Led Zepplin wannabe this guy is! His persona seems to totally dominate everything in this movie, and his screaming attempts at rock singing are almost enough to turn me off some of my favourite music! Maybe I could have tolerated (only just!) some of this if the script was any good, but since it wasn't .. I couldn't! Consider this - school kids play loud rock music during class at conservative private school and nobody knocks on the classroom door to investigate!! Nobody hears the music flooding down the hallway or if they do, they don't take any notice!?? This isn't just a stretch of reality, this is now the realms of fantasy; bad, mindless fantasy! SOR is obviously not a serious movie, but it is still meant to be reality-based, however .. it isn't! There are a few good sentiments in the film, like when 'Dewey' (Black's character) tells his class that the purpose of rock n' roll is not girls or drugs but 'sticking it to the man' (even though he proceeds to train them up to perform like little monkeys). I like this anti-drug sentiment in a movie involving kids. However, none of this can detract from Black's OTT annoyance factor!
Bad movies can leave you with a variety of different feelings but this one, I have to say, left me feeling depressed more than anything else. I guess it was the overall sentiment - little kids giving up valuable education to play music they are too young to really understand yet. There's something exploitative (albiet, ridiculous) about small children being drawn into the 'cock rock' aims of some dude that's just been fired from a band and has lied his way into becoming their school teacher. Sure, introduce them to the music, but don't force them to perform it every day. Didn't the Jackson Five teach anyone anything?
1 out of 10