In brief: One part unfunny Jack Black, one part Plot Holes big enough to drive a Mack Truck through, and one part cute but cliché-ridden Teacher-Makes-Connection-With-Students-Much-to-Discomfort-of-School-and-Parents-Movie.

Running time: approx 1 hour, 50 minutes.

Written by Mike White
Directed by Richard Linklater

CAST:
Jack Black Dewey Finn
Joan Cusack Principal Roz Mullins
Mike White Ned Schneebly
Sarah Silverman Patty
Miranda Cosgrove Summer Hathaway (the busybody class factotum who becomes band manager.)
Joey Gaydos Zack (The talented guitarist/writer with the ignorant father)
Kevin Alexander Clark Freddy Jones (the drummer)
Rebecca Brown Katie (the bass player)
Robert Tsai Lawrence (the piano/keyboard player)
Maryam Hassan Tamkea (the talented vocalist)
Aleisha Allen Aleisha, the backup singer
Caitlin Hale Marta, the backup singer

Jack Black plays Dewey Finn, a slacker guitarist who gets fired from his band. Facing a mountain of debts, he impersonates his friend Ned Schneebly, a substitute teacher, and takes a job as a 5th grade substitute teacher at an uptight private school. Initially dispensing with the students’ curriculum so that he can doze off, he learns some of his kids are talented musicians, and unbeknownst to the rest of the school, teaches them about rock music in order create a band out of them to win the Battle of the Bands.

I’m not really a fan of Jack Black. I’ve never seen him as anything other than just another one of those overrated “comedians” who, like Adam Sandler, David Spade, Tom Green, Pauly Shore, and Chris Farley are about as funny as a tonsillectomy, and whose appeal just escapes me. He was okay in Shallow Hal, one of the few Farrelly Brothers movies worth watching, but he’s never risen above the level of adequacy to me. But I heard good things about this movie. Everyone I spoke to who had already attended one of the numerous press screenings Paramount arranged for the film had said it was really good, which I suspected may have been due to director Richard Linklater, who with Dazed and Confused and Slacker, has a cult following, and perhaps makes it his business to work with material that’s better than usually what passes for Hollywood comedy these days. The trailer looked good, giving the impression that while he is a slacker and a fraud, that he genuinely loves music, and makes a connection with these kids, creating perhaps a funny version of Mr. Holland’s Opus.

After the first thirty or forty minutes of Black’s repetitive over-enunciation of his words served just to grate on me, the movie started to improve as we see Dewey organize the kids into a band, complete with security, a stylist, a manager, etc. There’s the usual movie clichés regarding kids competing in a competition, and it was genuinely nice to see the students come together to realize some of their hidden talents.

But the movie cheats.

It doesn’t try to strike a balance between Black’s humor and any sincerity on his part to connect with these kids. It wants to have it both ways. It wants him to be a selfish jerk in impersonating his best friend, stealing a good job from him, neglecting these kids and their studies, and use them for his own purposes, and then have everything turn out all rosy and sunny in the end, with no consequences for his actions. The parents, who are understandably outraged when they discover what this guy has done with their kids, are portrayed as either the bad guys when they tell their kids to do their homework, or ridiculously wishy-washy turnarounds when they see their kids performing, who suddenly decide that they’re somehow okay with this guy impersonating a teacher and telling their kids not to study math, science, English, and so forth. Dewey is portrayed as an expert in rock music who teaches the kids the history and theory behind the art form, but who dismisses all other musical genres (pop, classical, etc.) as unnecessary, which is not a sentiment I found either funny or a good way to teach people to appreciate rock. It would’ve been nice if instead of throwing the kids’ entire class curriculum out the window and acting like neglecting their studies was somehow a good thing, the movie instead chose to show the first-time teacher Dewey use music by incorporating it into his teaching of math, history, etc., not only to in order to reach some students having trouble with the subjects, but in order to learn how to teach himself. Instead, the movie takes the typical modern comedy route of portraying a narcissistic slacker as the hero for slacking off, and then lets him off at the end without any adverse consequences, and acts as if this is funny. He rips up the list of student names with demerits and gold stars, and announces that there will be no grades, not because he cares about the students, not because he has some radical new way of forming a rapport with the kids without grades, but simply because he feels like it, and because the movie thinks it’s funny. He tells the students to spend all day having recess, and when he decides to make them into a band, he tells them not to tell their parents or anyone else about it because it’s part of a special project for next term that he wants to give them a head start on, and when he’s discovered, he simply runs away. If the movie at least made him initially a delinquent, and then had him undergo a change in which his experiences with the students make him a responsible person, at least that would’ve been nice. Instead, he breaks the rules, hurting other people’s lives, and is let off the hook by the story’s end. Sorry, but I don’t buy it.

The movie isn’t really about love of music, nor is it that funny. Aside from a few humorous moments (as when Dewey, who arrives at the competition audition after it’s been fully booked, convinces the audition manager that his kids are all terminally ill, and after the manager sees the kids coughing and lying in down in the street, allows them to play), the movie borders on farce, which wouldn’t be so bad if it were funny and if it didn’t have so many ridiculous plot holes that White and Linklater didn’t even bother trying to plug up. I mean, after Dewey is exposed, the kids cut class, and show up at Dewey’s apartment with a schoolbus, complete with driver, so that they can go to the Battle of the Bands. But how did they manage to get the bus driver to take them there? Did they somehow trick him into taking him there? It would’ve been nice if they showed how clever these kids were (and by extension, the script) if they incorporated this into the story. Instead, the driver is little more than a mannequin utilized by the script as a non-entity, and as a non-thought. And for wasting months of these kids’ school lives, and by extension, the tuition money their parents pay for their attendance, Dewey isn’t imprisoned for fraud, contributing to the delinquency of children, and possibly reckless endangerment? None of the parents sued the school? Or Dewey himself? They just attend a concert, see how good their kids are, start rooting for them, and (Spoiler Warning) they allow Dewey to teach their kids in an after school music program afterwards? C’mon. At least they could’ve alluded to some sort of probation for him. Maybe they were impressed with how he tapped into their kids’ talents, but they should still angry at his fraud, how the school fell for it, and the fact that their kids were neglected for who knows how long. I would also suspect that the parents of the kids who were given non-artistic jobs like security would be even less enthused than the parents of Leonard or Tameka. Are you telling me Summer’s parents had no problem with this jerk who squandered their daughter’s school time to teach her how to be a band manager?

The movie is more or less okay on its own terms as a cutesy, mostless mindless two-hour long skit for people who enjoy mediocre humor and watching kids perform music. Hardcore Jack Black fans will probably love it. To each his own.

NITS: (Spoilers Here and There)
When Roz decides to inspect Dewey’s class, and sit in on it, the class puts all their music stuff away, and Dewey is writing Einstein’s relativity equation on the blackboard. First of all, the kids don’t have any books on their desks, so Roz should be suspicious. Second, I know this is supposedly the best elementary school in the state, as Roz tells Dewey, but are fifth graders really supposed to be taught relativity? Third, when Roz tells Dewey that one of the other teachers heard music coming from his class, Dewey denies it, and when Roz asks what the guitar in the corner is for, he picks it up, not missing a beat, and starts singing a song to help them learn math. Thing is, Einstein’s relativity would be within the realm of physics rather than math.

When Dewey is giving his presentation to his kids’ parents on Parents’ Night, Patty and Ned show up at his classroom door with Roz and two cops to expose Dewey as having impersonated Ned. At one point, Roz, Ned and Patty are standing shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, totally blocking it, and one of the cops is in the classroom, closer to Dewey. The scene cuts to a subsequent shot of Dewey running down the hall escaping the situation. How in the world did he manage to get by the cop, Roz, Patty and the other cop? How is it that the cops didn’t just stake out his apartment to arrest him?

Any Jack Black fans out there? If so, I managed to get a press folder last night at the screening we did in NYC for the movie. (The last we'll do, Thank God, for this f*^&%@# movie.) If anyone wants it, sound off, and I'll mail to ya.

Um, I like his band (Tenacious D) which I was under tha false impression this moive was supposed to be about. Oh, and his LotR parody with Sarah Michelle Gellar at the MTV moive awards was a scream. "Hey, Frodo! Eyes up here!" *LOL*

Uh, no I don't wnat the press folder, sorry. I still have no clue what I'm gonna do with that Tomb Raider 2 one you sent me.

I LOVED this movie!! I thought it VERY funny. I hope it goes on to make a LOT of money, and I'd be willing to bet it does. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good comedy, and who loves classic rock and roll. I was not a big Jack Black fan before this, but I thought he was wonderful in this part. And I'd like to point out that I believe these kids, or most of them, actually played their instruments. Luigi, I'll take that press package PLEASE!!

Okay. I've sent you an email about it.

Ok, I got your e-mail and replied with my address. Thanks! Only, your mailbox is filtered, and my e-mail is filtered through spamcop, so please let me know if you got it. It's a shame those dirty spammers have made e-mail so difficult.

I got it, because I entered your email address into my Address Book when I emailed you, so mail from that address can get through. (That's how the "Exclusive" setting works.) I'll mail it tomorrow.

Bah humbug, Luigi.

Get off the grumpy pills.
This was a very funny movie. A lot more than I believed it would be. Like you, I was never a Jack Black fan (and his antics whilst here in Oz recently didn't do much to change that) but this was a fun film. yeah, it had a lot of cliche's and that but so what? If you go into a movie with Jack Black in it then don't expect a deep night at the cinema, nor a highly sophisticated comedy. As a lover of classic rock I found the scene where he mentions Led Zeppelin and gets blank stares in return quite hilarious. Joan Cusack is perfectly cast (is there any movie of hers where she DOESN'T have a drunk scene??) as is Black.
I think for me what I appreciated was how the movie didn't talk down to it's audience like most of these teacher-touches-class-of-ninnies movies do. It spoke about how it's one thing to appreciate maths, english etc but also that rock music has a lot to offer.
BTW- I do believe a sequel is in the works which explores the consequences of this movie so Luigi, you might get your wish after all...