Egotistical, layabout, rock-god-wannabe Black gets fired from his band just before the make-or-break Battle of the Bands (not since Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure has a Battle of the Bands assumed such importance) and finds himself assuming the identity of his dorky roommate (White, who should have given himself more to do) as a substitute teacher to earn some bucks. Wacky hijinks ensue when he’s put in charge of a class of buttoned-down middle-schoolers at a snooty private school run by an uptight, repressed principal (poor Joan Cusack). Because there wouldn’t be a movie if he just sat on his ass and let the kids have recess all day, as he’s initially inclined to do, Black decides to turn them into rockers and challenge his old band at the big Battle.
The issue is not teaching them to play – they’re all better musicians than Black himself, despite his Tenacious D experience – but instilling in them the proper rockin’ attitude. My favorite part of the movie was Black's rant about "The Man" to the befuddled class. Something about urging these over-privileged, private-school kids to "stick it to The Man" is just deliciously absurd. There are also the obligatory “Black grows up by helping the kids grow up” moments – the uncool kid learns he’s cool, the fat girl learns her weight isn’t the most important thing about her, the shy kid learns to have confidence in himself – but they’re dealt with so perfunctorily that I like to think it’s Mike White’s way of mocking these formulaic moments in other movies (but I give White the benefit of the doubt in a way that I would not for Linklater, who used to just bore me, but whom I actively loathe after Tape). The kids, incidentally, are all very good – precocious, but not in a cutesy, sickening, Hollywood way.
Jack Black gets wearying after a while; he’s best in small doses. In fact, to be cute about it, the movie could have used a little less Black and a little more White. Whether it’s due to exhaustion from Black’s hyperkinetics, the patented Richard Linklater somnolence, or just running out of steam, the movie hits a lull from which it recovers only with a wildly over-the-top (and completely unbelievable, but forgivably so) performance by the kids at the Battle of the Bands.
Although in retrospect (I saw it more than a week ago) it’s fairly unmemorable, while you’re watching it, School of Rock is good fun.
Random note and audience rant: I picked the title of this review mainly because Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” has been stuck in my head since I saw Robbie Fulks perform it a few weeks ago. For those of you who don’t know him, which I’m guessing is pretty much everyone except Sue and Greg, Robbie Fulks is a sort of ironically traditional alt-country singer-songwriter who can do straight-up, Hank Williams-y twang followed by sardonic comedy, but he announced at the show – and I don’t know if he was kidding – that he’d recorded an album entirely of Michael Jackson covers.
By the way, he puts on a very good show, but the audience nearly ruined it for me. I was in a crappy mood anyway, and I’d gone to get my hair cut just before the show and finally lost the gamble of going to a beauty school – the guy barely spoke English, and I later found out that I was his first customer ever (which I could have guessed given that it took him 15 minutes to figure out how the sinks worked), and after close to two hours, he’d made my hair look worse than when I came in, and though the school promised to fix it, they couldn’t schedule me for two days, so I had to go to the show – where I actually stood a chance of meeting guys with whom I had at least musical taste in common – looking like a “before” picture. Then, the opening act was half an hour late, yet insisted on performing his entire uninspired set (he actually had to read his lyrics from a notebook propped on a music stand). When Robbie Fulks finally took the stage, things really started to get fun: I lost count of how many six-foot-plus guys would carefully look around to be sure they weren’t blocking the view of the people on either side of me, and then plant themselves directly in front of me. And people talked constantly! The perfect storm of jackasses was one group of three guys who, no matter where in the club I went, always ended up standing directly in front of me, talking loudly and smoking. Robbie Fulks would be singing a quiet, sensitive song, and a couple of dipshits next to me would be having a shouting conversation about how Hurricane Isabel didn’t affect them at all.
Why on earth would you pay to get into a show and then
spend the night listening to yourself instead? At what point did
ego become so paramount that people decided they could talk as loudly as
they wanted, any time and place they wanted, with no consideration for
anyone around them? Is there any venue left where people still
have enough respect to stay quiet?
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