![]() It’s easy to remember Black that way: a hyperactive sound machine, erupting into song and dance at a moment’s notice. Two decades later, School of Rock has remained the crowning achievement of his career, the rare perfect convergence of an actor and a character, crystallizing his musical expertise, innate kid-actor chemistry and man-child enthusiasm. Most notably, though, it epitomized the Jack Black experience. Throughout its steady run on cable, it’s influenced new generations, with a run on Broadway, Nickelodeon TV show and eventually an inspired TikTok trend. ![]() Upon its release in 2003, the family-friendly comedy turned into a box office smash (it made $131 million worldwide), and its fictional songs - specifically the anthem that concludes the movie - became instant earworms. In his pursuit, he throws out the curriculum, soundproofs the classroom and turns a bunch of privileged prep kids into strumming and drumming rebels. When he discovers his students have musical talent, he assembles them into a rock band, aiming to compete in a lucrative Battle of the Bands. Looking for a new way to pay rent, he poses as his educator roommate Ned Schneebly (Mike White, who also wrote the script) and takes a substitute teacher gig at a nearby private school. Released 20 years ago this week, the movie follows Dewey, an obnoxious guitarist who embarrasses himself with a face-planting stage dive that gets him kicked out of his own band. The scene all but confirms Black as a committed, chaotic and uninhibited tour-de-force and proves School of Rock could never work without him. But you’re not hardcore unless you live hardcore, so Black goes for broke, using his character’s adversity as a creative opportunity to unleash his most comedic, artistic, authentic self. “Legend of the Rent,” the title of this proposed headbanger, is about an unemployed grown man lacking the funds to stay in his apartment. Why else would director Richard Linklater capture this maniacal musician’s two-minute performance in one take, starting in close-up and slowly pulling back until its high-decibel finale? He knows there’s no reason to cut away - not when Black is air-plucking his guitar’s ascending lines, stomping his heel in propulsive rhythm and Irish jigging in rapid succession. It’s only 30 minutes into School of Rock, but you can tell this is Jack Black’s defining moment. Nearly out of breath, he concludes with a final sustained note, an imaginary explosion and raining confetti. Then he turns his mouth into a five-piece band, pivoting from a percussive bass line, to a face-melting guitar lick, to a Hawaii Five-O drum beat, to backup-singer falsettos. In the midst of reciting his opening lyrics, Dewey interjects with more atmospheric details - “a thin layer of fog comes in around my ankles” - which means his roadies will need to find dry ice. So he relents, takes out his pitch pipe and shares his vision: “It starts off with a dark stage, and then a beam of light, and you can see me and my guitar,” he says softly. Still, his class of newbie musicians wants to hear what their substitute teacher has cooked up for their upcoming rock show. ![]() It’s not ready yet - he wrote it in 15 minutes, he says, but he promises it’s awesome. It’s just the ‘Britney effect’, in their own words - the weird combination of mass-cultural and fetishistic creepiness that ruined the tween years of stars from the Disney Channel to Leon: The Professional at the start of the millennium.Dewey Finn has a song. ![]() The cast have all proclaimed his support and enthusiasm for their subsequent projects. No one but Cosgrove has another IMDb credit the band’s bassist went so far as to blame her eating disorder, drug addiction, and alcoholism on the early spotlight. Jack Black had already been thoroughly desexualised by a visible midriff unjust, perhaps, but at least relegating him to a category latterly occupied by bankable stars like Melissa McCarthy and Amy Schumer.īut the children of the band - the kids who, ironically, a washed-up adult uses to reinvigorate his popular status - didn’t all prove so adaptable. Miranda Cosgrove, who played teacher’s pet Summer, was in fact the only one of the bunch to swim, successfully, with the sharks best known for her role in iCarly, which she’s currently reprising in a nostalgia reboot on Paramount Plus, the late twenty-something was one of few child stars equipped to handle the ‘rock and roll’ lifestyle into which the film threw its pint sized protagonists. Truthfully, most of the School of Rock generation floundered under the creative yoke.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |