Films about a group being uplifted through the power of music is a genre in of itself, especially when it’s literally a group of children as it is here. Not actually being much of a fan of rock music, I had no real interest in this film save that it was directed by Richard Linklater and because it inspired a stage musical version by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Now that I am much more interested in.
Dewey Finn is a wannabe rock guitarist who has never achieved success but refuses to give up on his dreams even though he is entering middle age. As he does not work and sponges off of his friend Ned Schneebly, a substitute school teacher, Ned’s live-in girlfriend presents him with an ultimatum to come up with the rent he owes or be kicked out. After he is fired from his own band, he hatches a plan to earn some quick cash by impersonating Ned and accepting a job as a teacher at a posh prep school. At first he only intends to do the minimum of work possible by just sitting in class without teaching the students anything. But after he hears them practising in music class, he realizes that some of them actually have good musical skills and recruits them to form a new rock band.
I went into this thinking that this is a musical but it’s actually not much of one as there are few full-length song performances. There are only two original songs by the school band and apart from that, numerous short riffs of well-known ones by Dewey as played by Jack Black. It really is much more of a comedy and while the jokes can be amusing at times, they’re also rather low-brow and unworthy. In particular, the story falls back on women stereotypes such as Ned’s domineering girlfriend and the uptight principal who just needs to let her hair down and Dewey happily uses alcohol to get her to do that. That looks so cringey today. It doesn’t help either that Dewey’s plan is ridiculous and implausible, even by the generous Hollywood standards, relying on pretty much everyone else in the school being as dumb as rocks.
Where this film could have redeemed itself might be its message of using rock music to liberate the students and be more than just extensions of their parents’ ambitions. Yet even on this front, it’s a mixed success at best. This kind of film works best if it’s the kids themselves who take center-stage but Jack Black grandstands too much and draws away all of the attention. The kids never feel like they properly thrive in the spotlight or develop compelling personalities. The film would have been so much better if Dewey has a proper sobering climbdown moment when he realizes that he really doesn’t have the performing talent to be a successful musician after all. There are moments when it comes tantalizingly close and early on Dewey even makes the old joke that those who can’t, teach, but the film never really gets serious. It’s just silly gags and awesome rock power all the way. This feels disappointingly insubstantial from the director of the Before Sunrise series and Boyhood.
Overall this makes for decent enough entertainment but it doesn’t seem like anything special and even feels sad as Dewey’s continued exhortations to stick it to the main seems so shallow and pointless within the context of what is clearly a highly privileged group of kids. It’s just as well that the era of rock music is well and truly over and the proper musical language of rebellion against authority now is hip-hop and rap.