DVD – School of Rock

 ☻☻☻☻☻

(five smiley faces out of five)

School of Rock is a comedy movie rated PG-13 for lightly rude humor and apparently “drug references” but those must be pretty vague because I’ve seen the movie at least 20 times and offhand, I can’t think of what they are. There’s a tad bit of bad language, which mostly consists of the word “ass” being uttered—I dunno—maybe three or four times.

The movie stars Jack Black as a hapless rocker wannabe Dewy Finn, who needs to find a job quick or his roommate and his roommate’s bossy girlfriend (played excellently by Sarah Silverman) are going to kick him out.

Dewy happens to take a phone call for his roommate Ned who is a substitute teacher. Dewy decides that it’ll be easy money to take Ned’s “temping” job at an elite prep-grade school. I’ll stop summarizing here so as not to reveal any spoilers.

Let me just say that School of Rock is what I like to call a perfect movie. The writing is excellent. The dialogue is witty. The characters are expertly played by every actor in the movie, and that includes the kids. Joan Cusack, who I LOVE, plays the school’s uptight principal to delicious perfection. The plot is extremely satisfying, with everything wrapping up at the end like a big ol’ gorgeous present on Christmas morning. (Yeah, film major, that’s all cheesy and oh-so-typically American, but I happen to enjoy it sometimes.)

And the number one most awesome thing about this movie is that your kids, from the age of about four or five, will love watching it as much as you do, probably over and over and over again.