Rock band slacker Dewey (Black) is desperate for cash when a local prep school calls his roommate for a substitute teaching gig, so he takes his place. The only problem is all he knows how to do is rock...
Today is the first day of school for my senior-age daughter, and while it's not prep school I always hope she's getting a combination of learning and fun. If she's not, then this movie has it in spades while I sit here and cry over how old I'm getting.
Riffing off his moderate success with Tenacious D, Jack Black plays to his strengths of improvisational music, comedy, and sheer love of the subject matter. Take a classroom full of stressed, over-achieving ten year old kids, and put instruments in their hands, give them a goal and watch them take off.
If you want a feel-good school movie that isn't a basketball musical or some tough as nails teacher coming in to show some inner-city kids what life is really all about, then this is the movie you want. It's got lessons in self-esteem, questioning authority, playing to your strengths, and a decent musical catalog.
For the knitters, it's a decent movie as far as that goes. Five laugh out loud moments and one eye roll moment at Joan Cusack's *really* uptight principle. I also nearly added a new, fifth count category... the cringe category, for at least three cringe-worthy moments where Dewey was clearly under-educated to be trying to fool anyone into thinking he's a substitute teacher for anything. And the part where he says he's been "touched" by his students.
Always love this movie... four and a half out of five stars from me. That half a star is mostly for the cringe-worthy moments and the fact that I just couldn't suspend disbelief long enough to believe the parents would actually end up pleased with the result. One or two would see that man in jail, no matter how good the concert, just because they're the toe-the-line types. Also, we never found out definitively whether the real Ned ended up ditching his naggy, uptight girlfriend (Sarah Silverman) or she just faded away when the after school program started.
Check this movie out, especially if you're a fan of classic rock. The kids have fun with it, and it never hurts your ears. Unless you crank it up...
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