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SCHOOL OF ROCK (green)
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Even since his scene-stealing turn in his breakout role, HIGH FIDELITY, Jack Black (SHALLOW HAL) has specialized in the maniac; now he's back, as slacker-berserker Dewey Finn. Rather than be a corporate hack like Ned Schneeblee (Mike White, who also wrote the script for this and Black's ORANGE COUNTY), his roommate Sad-Sack, Dewey lives a life of slack, asleep in the sack, teeth yellowed with plaque, always under attack by Patty, Ned's henpecking girlfriend. His brain a-wrack for the jack to get Patty off his back, he fields a phone call from prim proper Rosalie Mullins (Joan Cusack), prissy principal of prestigious prep school Horace Green. She's desperate for brilliant substitute teacher Mr. Schneeblee, and when he hears what the job pays, around go the Ferris wheels that pass for his eyes.
Installed at school and instantly taken aback by the knowledge he lacks, Dewey feverishly tries a new tack. Gorging on his kids' snacks, he instills the ethos of rock (Roberta Flack to Fleetwood Mack and as far back as the eight-track) into his fifth-grade pack, handing out CD's by the stack, fusing them into a band with lead guitarist Zack (Joey Gaydes), singers front and back, and poised precocious prepubescent band manager Summer Hathaway (Miranda Cosgrove; peel a peeper for this poppet, who projects Natalie Portman presence and potential pulchritude).
Despite his spectac-ular lack of tact, his teaching knack and wiseguy cracks endear him to dowdy Cusack (delivering a winning layered comic performance of the sort Oscar never acknowledges because 'it's only a teen comedy'). She cuts him some slack, incurring parental flak ("You aren't mad?" he asks at one point. "I'm furious!" she shrieks, her arms windmilling, "but that was GREAT!!!"), but of course the story ends with the kids intact, everyone's life back in whack, and Jack in his music shack.
A movie that makes SHALLOW HAL look deep (I proposed yellow, Nancy gave me a whack), impossible to take seriously, with a plot often off-track and a REVENGE OF THE NERDS finish (copied almost exact), SCHOOL OF ROCK is nevertheless a highly entertaining flick (though I'm no flack), but leaves unanswered, Can Jack Black act?