I’ve got a cousin who is about 15 right now. I don’t really know what kind of music he’s into, but he’s probably at the stage I was at his age, maybe still in a mostly Beatles phase and liking other good music but not quite there yet as someone who lives and breathes it. I always wondered what kind of person I’d be if I was listening to Arcade Fire in 2004 when I was 14, so I had hoped to get him started on the right foot. Maybe I didn’t need to try and turn him into a misanthrope by giving him as much Cure, Smiths and Joy Division as I did, but the question remains: How do you get someone, either a kid or someone who is behind the curve, into loving music?
Well for one, you could show them “School of Rock.” This was a movie I had watched a lot from about the ages of 12 to 15, and I wondered if it would hold up as well now that I’m 22 and like music a little more complex than the ACDC the movie salutes. Jack Black’s Dewey Finn still lives in that “Golden Age” of meat and potatoes ’70s rock that would soon transform itself into ’80s hair metal and Spinal Tap self parody, and you could probably learn more about good music from the likes of “Almost Famous” or “High Fidelity,” which also stars Jack Black.
But the reason this is still a great movie to have on a parent’s DVD shelf for their kids is that it instills in them these exciting values of rebellion and thrashing out to epic rock without dipping into any of the cynical territory that usually goes along with it. Of course it mildly alludes to drinking, sex, drugs and violence, but those things are mostly frowned upon and afterthoughts to the idea of changing the world with a face-melting guitar solo by a 10-year-old. It maintains a sense of innocent rebellion by telling “The Man” to “step-off” by singing in very blunt terms, “I had to do my chores today/so I am really ticked off!”
Jack Black is really at the core of the movie’s good-hearted vibes, not the kids. He puts on that air of “don’t give a crap” when he first walks into the children’s classroom, but he quickly drops that act and is otherwise brimming enthusiasm and sincerity at every moment he gets to listen to these kids perform. Take that first scene where he discovers if they all can play. The scene works way too well in getting these kids up and rocking at once, but the movie doesn’t jam obvious references down your throat, and Black puts so much energy into cartoonish hand gestures and memorable one-liners (“you turn it on its side and ‘cello’ you got a bass!”) that you, nor your kids, will mind.
Black is his own vocal instrument, and he can give the idea of exciting rock while being funny doing it. Most kids today have heard shredding guitar solos on their dad’s Zeppelin albums, but they maybe shrug in ways previous generations didn’t. Black does one better by performing every bit of his own ridiculous song. Kids will remember his goofing around, not the music itself, but they’ll get the idea.
And by the movie’s end, both in the live performance on stage and in the post-credits sequence, “School of Rock” delivers everything as promised. Each of the kids, who all have their individual moments of token problems and growth, get to strut their stuff in one epic finale. It’s simple, ’70s rock, but it has the style and the attitude just right.