Ain’t nothin’ in the world like a good face melting guitar solo, am I right? Of course I am. Is there, though, anything more annoying than 108 minutes of in your face Jack Black, especially when everything else about the movie is really good? No, of course there isn’t. Such is the sadness that is School of Rock.
Seriously dude, Jack Black just pushes my buttons. He’s a little bit younger than me, eight years, but we seem to have grown up with more or less the same influences in music and movies (okay, more AC/DC and less Springsteen for him) and yet Black has missed the point completely. The cliche is that there’s a thin line between madness and genius but the other side of that coin is that there’s also a thin line between funny and too much. It’s a line that Jerry Lewis crossed once in awhile but generally knew where it was drawn; Martin Lawrence doesn’t even appear to sense the line’s existence. Black, unfortunately, is closer to Lawrence than Lewis.
Which is really too bad because Mike White (most famous for Chuck & Buck but also last year’s The Good Girl) has written a really funny script and, other than Black’s exaggerations that he probably couldn’t control, Richard Linklater does a superb job of blending a gaggle of 10 year olds with clueless adults. White also decided to act, taking the supporting role of Black’s roommate and pseudo-role model, though that was also probably less than optimal–is Jason Lee too big to take the second banana role these days?
The kids who play Black’s students are just terrific–they actually play the instruments that you see on the screen and were cast for their musical talent as much as (or more than, in some cases), their acting. Frankly, a couple of them can’t act but fit a desired stereotype, but no big deal.
I must say that the ending is about as cliched as you can expect but sometimes cliches work–because of the truth that underlies them–and that’s what happened here. Everything is jeapordized as the lies unravel but, bless their hearts, the kids have learned Jack’s lesson and refuse to lay down. They force Jack to stand with them and even make their parents, cardboard cutouts of people with sticks up their asses, demographically perfect, coo and awe at rebellion. Stickinittodamanitis, indeed.
Recommended
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