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United States, Germany · 2003
Rated PG-13 · 1h 50m
Director Richard Linklater
Starring Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, Sarah Silverman
Genre Comedy, Music, Family
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Fired from his band and hard up for cash, guitarist and vocalist Dewey Finn finagles his way into a job as a fifth-grade substitute teacher at a private school, where he secretly begins teaching his students the finer points of rock 'n' roll. The school's hard-nosed principal is rightly suspicious of Finn's activities. But Finn's roommate remains in the dark about what he's doing.
It's a bravura, all-stops-out, inexhaustibly inventive performance. I don't know how much was improvised, and how much comes from White's sharp screenplay, but Black may never again get a part that displays his mad-dog comic ferocity to such brilliant effect. He, and the movie, kick ass.
Combined with hilarious physical business and perfectly overearnest delivery of pseudocool lines like, "Let your fingers do the rocking!," he (Black) pretty much single-handedly keeps the formulaic progress funny.
Jack Black is consistently hilarious--and not just in his dreams of moshpit glory.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Feel-good tripe: a string of clichés lashed together by a formulaic plot that features underwritten characters and sit-com style humor.
School of Rock kicks ass. It's one movie that definitely goes to eleven.
The Hollywood Reporter by Kirk Honeycutt
The film hits another comic mother lode in the byplay between Black and Cusack.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
The School of Rock was made by gifted veterans of the American indie scene, but it's still the most unlikely great movie of the year.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Peter Rainer
Linklater, whose previous movies include "Slacker," "Before Sunrise," and "Waking Life," may be the most versatile director of his generation. School of Rock is his most unabashedly mainstream movie by far, and yet it’s commercial in the best way.
Three of the hippest indie film princes make a perfect commercial comedy.
Though tagged as the director's bid for commercial success, School Of Rock is as philosophical in its own way as "Slacker" or "Waking Life." It was made by people who not only know the music well enough to create magnificent flowcharts around it, but also understand how a simple, soul-stirring rock song can seem revolutionary.
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