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Director Richard Linklater, best known for his intellectually challenging art-house films (Waking Life, Before Sunrise), finds himself #1 at the box office this week with his most formulaic and commercial endeavor, The School of Rock. It's admittedly a predictable lowbrow comedy, but a surprisingly enjoyable one, thanks especially to the starmaking turn by Jack Black.

Obnoxious and reckless, Black belongs among the ranks of the most manic comedians. While he lacks Robin Williams' sophisticated wit and Jim Carrey's versatile range of expression, he shares their boisterous stage manner, and like John Belushi, he can also rock-and-roll. (During his offscreen hours Black plays gigs in a band called Tenacious D.) Director Stephen Frears knew enough to cast Black as a record-store know-it-all in High Fidelity, but Linklater has custom-made School to exhibit Black's passion for heavy metal from trivia to performance. He may have been confined to small supporting roles in Bob Roberts, Dead Man Walking, Waterworld, and Orange County, but this time Jack is ready for the spotlight, guitar in hand.

Fortunately for moviegoers, and despite Black's reputation as a comedy anarchist, the movie has a big heart, avoids crude indulgence, and gives viewers of all ages something to enjoy. Even religious press critics are moshing with the enthusiastic mainstream critics—most of them, anyway.

Black plays Dewey Finn, a heavy-metal-rock-star-wannabe. The film opens as Dewey is kicked out of his band. Hurt and fuming, he trudges home, only to receive an eviction notice from his roommate, a substitute schoolteacher named Ned (Linklater's co-writer, Mike White). Needing money, Dewey gets desperate and answers a call intended for his roommate. Before he realizes what is expected of him, he's stammering before a classroom full of skeptical sixth-graders, his dress shirt and bow tie barely containing his undisciplined spirit. It does not take long for him to cast off the curriculum and, behind the back of the school's legalistic principal (Joan Cusack), begin schooling the children in the history of rock music.

He doesn't stop there. The local "Battle of the Bands" is heating up, and Dewey wants to be on the battlefield. When he discovers his youngsters' musical talent, he begins training them how to listen to the Who, and then how to play like Pete Townsend. Before the parents, teachers, and police have a chance to interfere, he has entered his kids in the competition. Catastrophe surely awaits.

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) says that the filmmakers "wisely build their film around Black, who rewards them by staying on warp drive from beginning to end."

"I like the fact that this movie focuses on a whole generation of kids and pre-teens who have never heard (gasp) or even understood what the world of rock and roll was and is all about," says Holly McClure (Crosswalk). "Hopefully it will inspire a few kids to play an instrument, take band class, get involved in a music lesson outside their home. Ultimately the story's message about overcoming odds and criticism and rising to the occasion to prove yourself is a theme I think everyone will relate to."

Lisa Rice (Movieguide) says it is "marred by some obscenities and the whole theme of loving rock music." But she gives it a "really cute" rating anyway.

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) is not so amused. He says the film's positive message "is undermined by a problematic bass rhythm that pokes fun at parental authority and the value of any subject that can't be learned on an electric guitar. While its celebration of rock'n'roll music is not in itself a bad thing, the film offers a rather one-sided picture of rock culture … sugar-coating its darker side."

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October (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47