There’s not a whole lot going on in ‘The School of Rock,’ Jack Black’s first proper, solo, star vehicle. Director Richard Linklater (‘Dazed and Confused,’ ‘Before Sunrise,’ ‘Waking Life’) allows the star tremendous room to riff on his deluded slack-rocker persona.
The film marks a rare studio effort for Linklater, and it sometimes feels like a contrived, fish-out-of-water, mistaken-identity comedy plot shrunken down to indie size, with few locations and supporting cast betraying a tight budget.
Black plays Dewey Finn, a slacker who gets kicked out of his band right before a lucrative Battle of the Bands contest. Flat broke, Dewey takes a phone call for his straitlaced roommate (played by Mike White, who wrote the screenplay), a substitute teacher, and ends up subbing at a prestigious elementary prep school run by a stern but secretly sweet principal (Joan Cusack).
When Dewey finds the kids will not obey his orders to just sit around while he waits to collect his paycheck, he realizes some of them are talented budding musicians. He gives them a crash course in Zeppelin, AC/DC, the Sex Pistols and other cornerstones of rock, along with a prep school-meets-garage band makeover, all to battle other hardcore bands for the $20,000 prize.
The story plays out at the crossroads of ‘High Fidelity,’ ‘About a Boy’ and ‘Sister Act,’ and the climax, in which a gaggle of snobby parents who think their children have been kidnapped by a pedophile melt when they see the kids rocking out onstage, is tough to swallow even by broad-comedy standards. But ‘The School of Rock’ has undeniable charm, mostly because it allows Black to expand on the live-wire promise he showed in his supporting turn in ‘High Fidelity.’ His riffs and mannerisms are hilarious because he captures the essence of so many people perched on the fence between hipster and loser, and he proves he can wring a laugh out of almost any line (‘I service society by rocking!’ he snaps at Sarah Silverman, underutilized as the roommate’s shrewish girlfriend).
Cusack is wonderful as the straight arrow who learns to let down her hair (the character’s Stevie Nicks obsession is a nice touch). The kids are all talented, and the film avoids cutesiness 90 percent of the time. White’s screenplays for director Miguel Arteta tend to go several shades darker than this (‘Chuck ‘ Buck,’ ‘The Good Girl’) but his and Linklater’s grasp of arrested-development eccentricity remains acute. This is flimsy stuff, but it merits consistent if restrained laughs.
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