A failed musician steals the identity of a private school substitute teacher in a ploy to restart his career by manipulating innocent children into playing rock music for him. The logline of School of Rock might raise a couple of safeguarding alarms: a weird concept to read on the page, even weirder to imagine on the big screen. Maybe in an alternate universe, the movie is an absurdist, black and white Czechoslovakian psychodrama that tells a story of a classroom dictator as an allegory for communist power structures. In this world however, it’s a wacky early 2000s comedy starring Jack Black. I’m all the happier for it, and you should be too.
Setting the scene of the American film industry in the early 2000s is strange. It’s become difficult to imagine blockbuster cinema that isn’t oversaturated with superhero movies; a world without Batman and Antman, Ratman and Hatman; a time before Nolan and Zimmer thought it would hit hard to base an entire musical score on container ship foghorns. The Hollywood of the early 2000s is a Hollywood of the zany comedy, a Hollywood with an entirely different line-up of superstars. Instead of Henry Cavill, try Will Ferrell. Chris Evans? Sorry Sir, we only serve Adam Sandler ‘round here. In an acting landscape dominated by performers full-throttling physical comedy, it only makes sense that a Jack Black lead family film was a sure-fire hit with audiences. And while it may be elusive to deduce what exactly defines a 2000s comedy, School of Rock’s slapstick humour and feel-good charm captured on the soft textures of 35mm couldn’t make it anything else but a film of that era.
Still, it feels wrong to chuck this movie into a DVD box at a charity shop. Yes, it wraps you with a blanket of nostalgia, but that kind of warmth tends to be short lasted anyway. It’s something else. School of Rock unveils your childhood in a more direct way, guising as a cheesy movie to take your kids to on weekends, when underneath its covers lies an empathetic principle: we can’t do it alone, people find themselves through each other. Mike White’s screwball script is heart-warming, but School of Rock wouldn’t be what it is without the compassionate vision of direct Richard Linklater. Films like the Before Trilogy and Boyhood showcase Linklater’s affinity towards constructing a film out of idiosyncrasies in human interaction, an approach that seems to drastically oppose School of Rock’s high distortion “Crazy Train” of crazy craziness. Take a step back though, and you’ll see that while it is more kinetic and electric than some of Linklater’s other work, it’s still equally committed to those small moments shared between people.
Jack Black’s Dewey Finn is a man-child seemingly convinced of being the lovechild of Angus Young and Robert Plant. He begins the narrative as a funny, but more-so tragic character, a man prone to overcompensation, a man eager to exploit others; so long as he can prove to the world that his life isn’t a failure. It’s through one of those very manipulations, pretending to a schoolteacher named “Mr S,” where his goodness begins to beam out. Jack Black’s performance is so Jack Black in all the ways you’d expect it be, but again, it’s the little Linklater moments that stand out. The way Dewey Finn calibrates his tone, inflection, and body language depending on which student he’s talking to is beautiful, this performance is an instruction manual teaching how to offer kindness and reassurance to others.
School of Rock is from afar a film of its time, one of many copy-paste crowd pleasers. Yet, revisiting Richard Linklater’s blockbuster comedy twenty years later has inspired two feelings: first relief, then revelation. Not only is this movie not bound to its era, but it has also outgrown it. More than a nostalgic compilation of plastic-y punchlines, School of Rock is sincere but rebellious in its inspiration of laughter and catharsis. As Dewey tells the shy and self-conscious Zack: “Rock got no reason, Rock got no rhyme.” You don’t need to be anyone other than yourself. It’s a cult classic, I love it, and I know you do too.
“2023 Rock im Park – Tenacious D – Jack Black – by 2eight – ZSC1868” by Stefan Brending (2eight) is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.