Jack Black is back in School of Rock

The greatest irony about School of Rock (SOR) is that while it talks about the love of rock and celebrates the greatest classic rock artists of all time, it plays like a predictable Swedish pop song -- all happy and rosy -- the same genre that it pokes fun at. But if you strip away the formulaic plot lines, the expected turns and the clich??d ending, SOR is still a very entertaining movie. Jack Black's (Shallow Hal, High Fidelity) new movie -- and one of his first lead role in a high budget film -- hits the right notes, paces itself well and has a clever sense of comedic timing. It's a movie aimed mostly at kids but something college students and parents will appreciate.

Dewey Finn (Black) is a struggling guitarist on a local band who wakes up one morning to find he's been fired. Dewey lives in a corner of his best friend Ned Shneebly's (Mike White) apartment and has lived off Ned long enough for his overbearing girlfriend Patty (Sarah Silverman, who plays the role to perfection, and I suspect she is this annoying in real life) to start threaten him to kick him out if he doesn't pay the rent soon enough. After a few futile attempts at trying to sell his Gibson SG he hears about an opening for Ned ("I am a substitute teacher, not a temp!") and shows up at a school pretending to be his roommate.

At this point, you begin expecting the fake-teacher-meets-kids-who-like-him-but-he-has-to-get-caught-at-some-point story line. What saves the movie is how Richard Linklater (director of Waking Life, the tediously animated philosophical journey) decides to take the movie from here to its inevitable conclusion. Instead of supplying a horde of cute fourth grade kids with missing teeth who attempt to charm the audience Little Rascals-style with their antics, SOR requires them to be more than just superficial stage props. The driving plot theme in the movie is Dewey's dream to win the "Battle of the Bands" rock contest. On his second day at the school, he discovers the musical (and technical, managerial, and so on) talents of his class. Well would you believe it, his ticket to the contest and its jackpot is sitting right in front of him.

The assigning of roles to the different students and their consequent tutoring shapes the most entertaining sequence of the film. The class prefect gets to be band manager, the cello player ("Posh Spice") is converted to the bass guitarist, and the fat kid gets to handle security, and so on. There are even band "groupies" who have to think of the name for the band and Billy the band stylist who plays his part to perfection. Linklater cast his young actors according to skill and it gives more weight to their performances. There is one memorable scene where you can see videos of Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix and others (intended to teach the on-stage moves) while in the background the chalkboard has a web of different rock forms and the bands that represent them.

Meanwhile, Finn has to keep the hard-nosed school principal (Joan Cusack) at bay. She feels the pressure of parents paying a fortune for their children's education (he tries to get her to consent to a field trip by getting her drunk and making her sing to Stevie Nick's "Edge of Seventeen"). She is the perfect fall person for such a movie, our grumpy-dwarf-waiting-to-turn-happy when the time is right. As the movie runs along, it only brings us closer to the final set of incidents.

Mike White also wrote the screenplay for the movie. After the dark comedy from Good Girl he makes a jump back into his Orange County-mode with SOR. The story is quick to move along and the underlying echoes of "Stick it to da man" help usher it along smoothly. Jack Black admitted that School is close to the rock genre based role he's always wanted. Portraying loud, energetic and over-the-top characters is what he likes and this was right up his alley.

The movie wasn't consistent on Dewey Finn's motives all the way through. There seems to be a fluctuating discrepancy between whether he's in it for the money, the kids or for putting on that one great show of his life. But these are little details that you forgive in a movie like this and just sit back and enjoy the music and the jokes. School Of Rock is as refreshing as Britney Spears but won't be quite as timeless as Black Sabbath.