School of Rock (2003) * *

Directed by:  Richard Linklater

Starring:   Jack Black, Mike White, Joan Cusack, Sarah Silverman, Miranda Cosgrove

School of Rock is an innocuous comedy about wannabe rocker Dewey Finn (Black) who fakes his way into a job as a substitute schoolteacher for a group of students at a prestigious charter school.    This isn't Welcome Back Kotter and the kids aren't the Sweathogs.   The students are actually pretty nice, but are just used to rigid adherence to the curriculum.    Dewey doesn't know much about anything except music, so after witnessing the group playing classical music, he decides this will not do and instead teaches them about rock while trying to avoid detection by the school's strict principal (Cusack). 

Dewey's motives are not altruistic.   He is at the age where his dreams of becoming a rock god are becoming more fleeting by the day, especially since he crashes rent free on his buddy's couch.    He is kicked out of his band weeks before a battle of the bands which he is convinced will take him places.  So, he forms a rock band with the students in hopes of winning the battle of the bands.  The kids are mere props in his scheme.   Along the way, not unpredictably, he grows fond of the kids and decides not to perform to enrich himself, but because the students find freedom and identity in belonging to a band.

School of Rock is cute, slight fare.   The plot is not going to win any points for originality, and it doesn't necessarily need to.   Some singers can make an old song sound new.   Jack Black delivers such a high energy performance compared to the subdued tone of the movie that you would think he was dropped in from a nearby film shoot.   As a rock guitarist himself, Black clearly loves this stuff.    He's like a kid in a candy store. 

So why did I not get much out of School of Rock?   It is a gentle comedy where everyone is mostly nice, even the snobbish students who at times look at Dewey like he's an alien.   The only character who we could classify as a villain is Dewey's girlfriend Patty (Silverman), who thinks Dewey is a pathetic bum and can't believe her henpecked boyfriend Ned (White) can stomach Dewey sponging off of him.   But, if you think about it, can you really blame her for her misgivings about Dewey?

School of Rock checks the boxes in terms of its plot development.   There are no surprises.   Dewey and the kids will start off rocky, form an icy truce, and then go all-in together.   Will Dewey's ruse be discovered that he isn't really a teacher?   Will the kids like him anyway?   Will he be arrested for fraud of some kind?    Two of those three answers will be yes, and it is baffling how the third scenario didn't play out.   Oh, and will the strict principal and Dewey become lovers?   And will she let her hair down?    Yes and no.   There is a rumor in the movie about the principal that one time, when drunk, she belted out a mean version of Stevie Nicks' Edge of Seventeen.   So Dewey fills her with beer and plays the song on the jukebox, but nothing really happens.   The entire movie feels that way.  There is a setup, but nothing eventful comes of it.