School of Rock (2003)

Here's my honest take on School of Rock: it's a film that works perfectly well if Jack Black works perfectly well for you, and if he doesn't, you're going to spend roughly an hour and forty minutes waiting for someone else to take the wheel. Nobody ever does.

The setup is as straightforward as they come. Black plays Dewey Finn, a wannabe rock god who bluffs his way into a teaching job at a posh prep school and promptly decides the best use of his pupils' time is turning them into a functioning rock band. The kids are sheltered, the parents are uptight, the headmistress is disapproving, and the battle of the bands looms on the horizon. You've seen this film before, even if you haven't seen this film. Misfit arrives, gifted kids discover themselves, everyone comes out the other side with a bit more belief and a lot more noise. It hits every beat you'd predict, in roughly the order you'd predict it.

And yet, within that formula, there are genuine pleasures. The kids are the best thing here by some distance. They've got real charm and real musical ability, and watching them warm to Dewey and gradually find their footing with rock music is actually fun. There's an infectious energy to those sequences, a sense that some of these young performers are genuinely buzzing at the chance to do something different. The film is at its most enjoyable when it gets out of Black's way and lets them breathe.

The trouble is, it very rarely does. This is a Jack Black vehicle in the most complete sense of the phrase. His performance as Dewey is loud, physical, relentlessly committed, and about as subtle as a power chord played through a Marshall stack with all the dials turned up. If you're already a believer in his particular brand of manic energy, you'll probably have a brilliant time. I'm lukewarm on it, and that made the whole thing start to drag somewhere around the halfway point. The jokes are broad, the sentiment is piled on thick, and there's barely a scene where Black isn't either gurning, howling or launching himself around the screen. By the third act it genuinely starts to feel less like a movie and more like a very long Jack Black impression of a movie.

It's worth saying that this isn't a bad film. It's not trying to be anything other than what it is, and on those terms it mostly succeeds. The music is fun, the message is harmless, and it's the kind of thing that goes down easy on a lazy Sunday afternoon when you're not asking too much of it. I can see exactly why it's got the following it has. Black's energy is infectious for a lot of people, and the film is built with enough goodwill that it's hard to actively dislike. It reminded me a little of watching Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004), another film from around the same era where the comedy hinges almost entirely on one performer's persona. The difference is I find Will Ferrell's particular madness a bit easier to ride.

And Black is someone I can appreciate more in doses. He's genuinely funny in flashes here. But School of Rock is not doses, it's the full measure, poured generously and repeatedly, and by the end I was ready for something a little quieter.

Two and a half stars. A feel-good formula executed with enough warmth and kid-led charm to make it watchable, but if you're not already converted to the Church of Jack Black, it's unlikely to bring you into the fold. You'll come away thinking: yeah, that was fine. And sometimes fine is all it is.

Rating: ★★½  | Year: 2003  | Watched: 2025-09-02

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Where to watch

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