{"id":5493,"date":"2004-05-02T22:03:39","date_gmt":"2004-05-03T02:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=5493"},"modified":"2004-05-02T22:03:39","modified_gmt":"2004-05-03T02:03:39","slug":"school-of-rock-2003","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/02\/school-of-rock-2003\/","title":{"rendered":"School of Rock (2003)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"MPW-9466\"<\/a>In this loving ode to rock and music, the always funny Jack Black stars as slacker and freeloader Dewey Finn, a passionate rock buff who is kicked out of his band after antics and attempts to hog the spotlight. Pressured by his roommate to make some money for his share of the rent, he\u2019s threatened to get a job or be kicked out. He then poses as a substitute teacher to make the money and stumbles onto an elementary class of shy students with zero confidence and after witnessing their musical talents decides to form a band for the battle of the bands.<\/p>\n

Black is perfect in this role because he\u2019s basically like a big kid anyway, so his chemistry is natural with them here. The kids in the film are not real actors, they\u2019re musicians who were recruited for the film, but, thank goodness, they\u2019re all very good here. If you\u2019re wondering if these kids really rock like this, then you\u2019re right in your assumption. They\u2019re all great musicians, especially Joey Gaydos Jr. who is just an incredible guitarist. This is really just a practice for Black\u2019s shticks, physical comedy, and well delivered one-liners. Thankfully, he has a lot to work with here. Black is very, very funny here, and has a good rapport with the children, and he\u2019s especially funny when he\u2019s around adults because he looks like he doesn\u2019t belong and he\u2019s hilarious trying to keep up with them.<\/p>\n

Black, a self-confessed rock buff is really believable here as the passionate rock wannabe, the primary character which was written for him especially by director Richard Linklater. Director Linklater really does show mainstream America how to play the game when it comes to directing a film and accentuates the intended rock mood. There\u2019s some truly good music here from AC\/DC, Black Sabbath, and Zeppelin, and we to hear a lot of it. There is a lot of fun stuff involving the children who are actually very, and the writer approaches these kids with a charming attitude and treats them as people not as tools for comedy, and he doesn\u2019t make fun of them nor do they demean them at any point. Then, there\u2019s, of course Dewey who is likable despite being irresponsible in the opening because he connects with the kids and unties them. He not only gives them musical skills, but he gives them confidence within the music to express themselves and they do, not to mention Black is just very funny here.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of laugh out loud moments including when he\u2019s trying to get the kids to insult him, and when he\u2019s singing math to the kids and gets an equation wrong. The sequence where he\u2019s gathering the kids in the band is very cool, teaching the young Zack the guitar finger wave perfected by Angus Young (Look him up!), and then there\u2019s the climax which was just insane, excellent and basically realistic in its resolution; the musical number from \u201cSchool of Rock\u201d is really kick ass, I can not stress it enough. This story has been done to death, and to death, and over and over. Concept for script: Unorthodox slacker stumbles onto class of underdogs and instills confidence within them and unites them in some form or another. It\u2019s been done and I knew everything that would happen in this awfully routine script and the ending, while different was also pretty predictable.<\/p>\n

I wish they\u2019d taken a different approach instead of becoming very clich\u00e9 by the numbers throughout the story. Also, there\u2019s not enough emphasis on Cusack\u2019s character here. She\u2019s often mainly just a plot device to pick up Black\u2019s slack in the comedy department rather than a real character to root for or care about. She appears sporadically throughout the story and we never feel as if we\u2019ve gotten a real touch on her personality. Black is exhausting here; just utterly exhausting with a lot of over the top improvising and physical shticks that I just had no patience for, many times. If he\u2019d been more low-key than maybe he wouldn\u2019t have reminded me of Robin Williams times three. And let\u2019s not forget the story which is very far-fetched requiring a stretch of the imagination.<\/p>\n

He manages to get into the school as a substitute but there\u2019s no interview, no asking for credentials by him, seemingly no security in and around the school, though Dewey\u2019s friend Ned claims to be a substitute, no one has ever seen his face so it\u2019s easy to take Ned\u2019s place, when Dewey is caught he\u2019s not arrested for endangering the lives of children, and isn\u2019t there usually an age limit for the battle of the bands? Logic has to mainly be impaired here. Despite the familiar and godly overdone plot, this is just such a wicked rocking movie , and, being the rock fan I am, I couldn\u2019t help but love this hilarious, sweet, and kick ass kids comedy with such an excellent score, kids I actually liked, and an ending that rocked hard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this loving ode to rock and music, the always funny Jack Black stars as slacker and freeloader Dewey Finn, a passionate rock buff who is kicked out of his band after antics and attempts to hog the spotlight. Pressured by his roommate to make some money for his share of the rent, he\u2019s threatened […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[209,219,302,340,580,700,846,866,885],"class_list":["post-5493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-classic-rock","tag-comedy","tag-drama","tag-family","tag-kids","tag-musical","tag-richard-linklater","tag-rock","tag-s"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}