School of Rock update

 

School of Rock update January 2025

• Director: Richard Linklater
• Based on book: No
• Cast: Jack Black, Joan Cusack, Mike White, Sarah Silverman, Miranda Cosgrove, Joey Gaydos Jr., Rebecca Brown, Aleisha Allen, Robert Tsai, Kevin Alexander Clark, Maryam Hassan, Caitlin Hale
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor/actress in:
• Jack Black – Be Kind Rewind, Margot at the Wedding, The Holiday, Tenacious D, King Kong, High Fidelity, Cradle Will Rock, Mars Attacks!, Dead Man Walking
• Joan Cusack – High Fidelity, Runaway Bride, Cradle Will Rock, Grosse Pont Blank, Corinna Corinna, Working Girl, Married to the Mob
• Mike White – The Good Girl
• Why bought: fun movie
• Seen: Two or three times. This time: May 5, 2013 with Hal and his sister AS 

We didn’t plan on watching this next after High Fidelity but it was chosen by my 75-year-old visiting sister-in-law because it’s one of her favorites. OK by us! It’s been on our see-again-soon shelf for quite awhile.

I’m a sucker for: 1) movies about music, 2) movies about teachers, 3) movies about kids who are losers, get inspired and pull together to achieve the impossible, 4) Jack Black.

The role was created by Mike White who evidently knows Jack Black well. Nobody else could have done the obnoxious slobby loser rock freak with a heart of gold to perfection like Jack Black.

It’s fun to see Joan Cusack as a rigid hung-up school principal who conceals a rock chick beneath her strict gray suit.

The kids are outstanding as poor little rich kids repressed by their overachieving parents turned let-‘em-loose rockers by Jack Black’s iconoclastic teaching methods.

It’s completely unbelievable, filled with clichés, by-the-numbers predictable, and he didn’t ask Katie (Rebecca Brown), the bassist, to play a solo over the rolling credits (all the others got to). 

But it’s great fun.  And it’s obvious that they’re all having a ball making the movie.  That carries them a long way. 

3 ½ * of 5

 

Update 9 January 2025

All of the above. When the world and reality are just too much to endure, a Jack Black film can make life bearable, and what better than School of Rock? This time

 

4* of 5