For those about to rock, we salute you!

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2003)

Rock movies that manage to be truly insightful are rare. Kid's movies that happen to be sincere and honest are even rarer. Mixing the two genres together could have conceivably ended up as a critical nightmare.
But `The School of Rock' fuses the two categories together into a film that is funny, touching, energetic, and most important, does indeed rock.
Time has not been kind to rocker Dewey Finn (Jack Black), who has just been fired from his position of lead guitar in a rock band because the rest of the group feels his on-stage antics are out of place in the 21st Century. To top it off, he still crashes at the apartment of his buddy Ned Schneebly, who has grown out of the rock 'n roll age and become a respectable substitute teacher.
Faced with the unfortunate prospect of getting a real job so that he can fork over his share of the rent, Dewey pretends to be Ned when answering a phone call and excepts an urgently needed teaching position at a local prep school. He soon butts heads with the school principal Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack), who's stern but amicable, and also shocks his fourth grade students with his flagrant disregard for traditional classroom protocol.
Dewey at first sees his job as nothing more than a baby-sitting gig and is content to let the kids run free all day long, all the while trying to put together his own band to compete in an upcoming rock competition. Just when he's about to give up hope, however, he realizes the children in his class are talented musicians, at least in a classical music sense, and the bass guitar in his brain soon strikes the right note.
Dewey plans to mold his little class of 10-year-olds into the ultimate rocking band, all the while promising them that they're training for a secret school project. They include teacher's pet and general smarty pants Summer (Miranda Cosgrove), who Dewey assigns as band manager, socially awkward Lawrence (Robert Tsai) who quickly makes the transition from piano to keyboard, introverted Zack (Joey Gaydos) who moves from acoustic to electric guitar and class showoff Kevin who gets to become the drummer.
`The School of Rock' works because it is clever, observational and never condescending to its audience. Dewey is shocked to discover a whole generation of kids who have never heard of Led Zeppelin or The Who, and thinks the full scope of all musical entertainment revolves around MTV.
The film's biggest mistake could have been making the children all typical Hollywood kids, which come in the form of either perfect little angels or out of control hellions. These children, however, all behave like real kids and the movie is better for that. As in real life there are attention seekers, like Summer and Kevin, shy kids afraid to express themselves like Lawrence, Tomika (Maryam Hassen) and Katie (Rebecca Brown), and children yearning for their parents' acceptance like Zack.
Black easily walks away with the whole movie as Dewey, a tried and true rocker who hands out classic rock CDs to his class as homework and feels a rock song just isn't right unless it has a wicked guitar solo. Black is a livewire on camera, the modern answer to John Belushi and the proof that geeks, not cool people, are the ones who truly rule the rock 'n roll scene.
The children also all give heartfelt performances, and quickly learn from Dewey to ditch pop divas and jam to the gods of rock. Cosgrove plays Summer as just the right balance of confidence and control freak, and Gaydos makes Zack a believably sad but determined child. Needless to say the children all give strong characterizations to their roles, and the movie is all the more likable because of this when they are ultimately triumphant.
Many may accuse Houston-born indie director Richard Linklater of selling out with this mainstream offering after a decade of art house projects, but he clearly has his heart in every frame. The story may be formulaic but Linklater is able to get good performances out of everyone, and movie rolls along with a nice pace. The result is a movie where the use of classic rock hits like Led Zeppelin's `The Immigrant Song' and AC/DC's `Back in Black' seems earned, and not just tacked on by studio execs to please the demographics.
`The School of Rock' may not be a rock masterpiece, but it is definitely destined to be an underground hit for years to come. This is an entertaining film the whole family should enjoy, and for those filmgoers who chose to rock, we salute you.
Eight out of ten star. Jack Black and the kids make this movie a great fusion of "To Sir, With Love" and "This is Spinal Tap."