October 3, 2003
By D.K. Holm
Rock Around the Clock
SCHOOL OF ROCK
[nota bene: The following review, by necessity, contains some spoilers! If you don't want to know the ending, don't read on!]
There are several "types" of directors in the world. There are the "location masochists," such as John Huston and Werner Herzog, who think nothing of going to the sands of Africa or the rim of a volcano to make their movies. Then there are the pre-planners, like Hitchcock and Scorsese, who dream cinema and who imagine or story board a film well in advance of actually shooting and who sometimes prefer not to go on location at all. There are also the "tube directors," whose aesthetic is founded on the limitations of television, and who care about story and emotion and think little if anything about visual style.
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And there are the "multi-tasking directors." These are the guys who want to do everything. Robert Rodriguez is the premiere example. He writes the film, directs it, shoots it, edits it and picks the music, supervises the special effects and probably empties out the Port-O-Potties in his spare time. This type of director also likes to dabble in all genres. Steven Soderbergh, for example, has directed a heist film, a remake, a science fiction film, a surrealistic comedy, a nostalgic comedy, and a Spalding Gray film (the usual unifying item of most multi-taskers). Bogdanovich has done a screwball comedy, a romantic comedy, a nostalgia comedy, a horror film, a Merchant-Ivory heritage film, and a musical, among others. Richard Linklater has directed two play adaptations, a western, a high school coming-of-age tale, an animated film, and now a rock and roll comedy.
Is it any surprise, really, that Linklater's is among the best entries of a meager genre?
SCHOOL OF ROCK tells the disarmingly simple story of a failed rock and roller named Dewey Finn (Jack Black) who, like Izzy Cole in ROCK STAR, is tossed out of his own band. About to be evicted from the home of his best friend, Ned Schneebly (credited screenwriter Mike White), whose wife Patty (Sarah Silverman) hates him, Dewey takes a job meant for his substitute teacher landlord as a sub at Horace Green, an exclusive prep school.
The school is run by the strict, seemingly humorless, and prune-faced principal is Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack). Little does she know that her new sub has thrown out the syllabus and is now leading the classroom in a history of rock and roll, meant to culminate in the class, which is filled with unexploited musicians, appearing in a battle of the bands competition where his former allies are also competing.
Evading the eye of the increasingly suspicious Mullins, Finn instructs his 10-year-old charges in R&R, indicating specific moments to listen to on CD, the proper guitar stance, the right faces and attitudes to make, what to wear, but most important, how to express their feelings, indeed their incipient sense of rebellion.
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Like his character in HIGH FIDELITY, Black's Finn is an acolyte in the temple of music. Like the kids in the audience who are his fans, Black's music-based characters put rock and roll above all else, and view the music not just as entertainment but as a religion that sates their needs, and a philosophy that answers all their questions. To everything else, the Black Musician is indifferent. The rest of the world is a sucker waiting to be scammed for his immediate desires. Black is the new Bill Murray, or at any rate, the new "old" Bill Murray, of MEATBALLS and STRIPES. Like the Murray of old he beguiles the audience by being as disrespectful of institutions and quick on his feet with girls as the viewer wants to be. If Black is a little colder and more intense, that's because even fashions in "irony" have grown darker.
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That's why it’s weird to see Black as a character who is so lovable. But then, at the end of the early films Murray made he too usually ended up dropping the rebellious pose and embraced "normalcy," committing himself to just one woman and doing his duty to his country. Here, Finn has to occasionally sweet talk his kids into living up to their potential and as the film progresses he is clearly not doing so just to achieve his selfish goal of beating his rivals in the battle of the bands. He believes in what he is saying.
The whole of SCHOOL OF ROCK is lovable. There is something almost magical about the film. From almost the first minutes that Finn spends in the classroom until the final credits you smile broadly and laugh and the smile doesn't fade until several hours after the film is over.
Yet SCHOOL OF ROCK doesn't particularly "feel" like a Richard Linklater film. It's not lushly romantic as many of movies have been, and doesn't have any visual experimentations as his films are wont to have. In any sense, anyone could have directed SCHOOL OF ROCK. As it happens, Linklater did direct it, and I would argue that the film, for all the conventional seeming premises at its heart, is better for that. He brings a directorial competency that is buttressed by the fact that he isn't looking down on the material, that he doesn't view himself as slumming with summer movie type material.
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As it happens, I interviewed Linkater in Portland, Oregon for an obscure weekly newspaper back in the early '90s when he was promoting DAZED AND CONFUSED. I had originally not "gotten" SLACKER, and then I became its biggest convert. Linklater was in Portland because his parents were living there at the time, and that gave me the answer to a nagging question: the appearance of an Oregon license plate on a car in the Texas-set SLACKER (it was his parents' car). We met on a Thursday morning amid the hung-over cigarette-smoke laden air of a rock club called The X-Ray café, and the conversation ranged among numerous subjects. He was a very, very nice guy and he won me over.
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Both his haircuts and his movies have improved since then and I would hazard to say that Linklater remains the most truly "independent" of the so-called indie filmmakers who got their start in the '90s. SLACKER in fact was released in 1991, and to track his films is to look at the ups and downs of the decade as a whole. Many of his projects seem "misguided" from a commercial perspective, but isn't that the point of an indie film movement? While other filmmakers were getting a lot of attention, Linklater, who made a film about every two years or so, was steadily perfecting his craft and exploring new territory. Linklater's films are almost quietly competent, not ostentatiously movie-ish like Scorsese's, but with a knack for the cool flourish when one is needed, which may be a characteristic of the Texas school of filmmakers.
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My only complaint about SCHOOL OF ROCK is the continual use of Sarah Silverman as a scold and bitch. This sexy, funny actress and comic with the squeaky voice and the acerbic wit has done some great things on the screen, such as her foul-mouthed barrage at the start of that masterpiece THE WAY OF THE GUN, and her petite cameo in the otherwise dull EVOLUTION. But lately she has been in danger of becoming the shrill bad girlfriend that the audience is suppose to hate and who makes the main character look good, this after years of looking like she was going to become the modern Eve Arden, the pretty girl's buddy who has the reality check attitude. My favorite Silverman moment of all time comes in the end credits to THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, where everyone had to sing the "Buttercup" song. Silverman's portion of the montage comes with the lines, "But what's worst of all, you never call, baby, when you say you will." While everyone else is overplaying the song and jumping around, Silverman stares into the camera with smoldering slit-eyed fury, doing the song as if it were Strindberg instead of The Foundations. To me, that makes her moment all the more hilarious. It's a real bonding moment when you meet someone who had the same reaction to this obscure Silverman moment.
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I suppose it's too early to propose SCHOOL OF ROCK as a great movie. It's certainly a heck of a lot more fun than most of the films I've seen so far this year, and is easily one of the best Linklater films, which is itself tough competition. SCHOOL OF ROCK highlights Jack Black in a great way and does that most difficult of things, delights the audience outside the circle of cynicism. SCHOOL OF ROCK gives pleasure, and that's what a lot of us went to film school, both literally and figuratively, to discover.
NEXT TIME:KILL BILL, VOLUME ONE
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