More about this DVD  •  DVD Info  •  Movie Main Page  •  Message Board

Black is perfect as a bumbling idiot rocker posing as a substitute teacher at a snobby prep school, and his pitch- perfect timing and ability to engage the audience is both winning and atypically effective. Witness what is perhaps the film's best scene, when Black first sets up his equipment in the classroom, and teaches this classically-trained charges how to kick out the jams - with just three chords, and the truth. Linklater lets his camera go long to capture the action, opting to be a fly on the wall rather than turn up the cutesy kitsch to 11. It is a very simple and direct approach that works perfectly, and is key to Linklater's enduring indie success: Black merely shows these kids how to play some remedial notes and chords, and nothing more. How ironic that it would take an unsung auteur, one many thought had lost his Hollywood clout, to turn a story this ooey-gooey into one that is not only watchable, but entirely winning.

However, if there is a dark side to School of Rock, it's that as a whole it still does come up a bit short. Mike White's script isn't entirely dissimilar from what he did on The Good Girl or Chuck & Buck. There is a lovely comic vibe that pops its head up through White's sparse use of language and dialogue, but sometimes it feels like he is trying too hard. School of Rock's last act is especially prone to plot contrivance. I understand that a genre piece like this needs to stick to its narrative guns in order to entertain, but there are so many lapses in motivation (let alone coincidences that are entirely unbelievable, such as when the parents of kids who go missing during class merely shrug it off once they discover they've followed Black to a rock concert), even Linklater's jovial, lackadaisical mood can't keep White's conceit from crumbling under the weight of predictability.

But even if School of Rock ends up becoming a slave to its own need to please, there is still much to admire. Black is again terrific - I can't imagine anyone else doing it as well - and the chemistry between he and the kids is genuinely magical. And the film does have a rock and roll spirit that transcends even the most melodramatic of its many implausibilities. So the moral of today's lesson is this, kids: you can put as much as much rock 'n' roll into Hollywood as you want, but too much Hollywood in rock 'n' roll can totally kill your buzz.

Video: How Does The Disc Look?

Presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, this is a very fine transfer. Colors are especially impressive, with dark greens and blues that really pop off the screen and consistently natural fleshtones. Blacks are rock solid and contrast excellent, and as you would expect from a new film, the source print is pristine. Only lacking is overall detail, which in the outdoor scenes looks muddy and lacking in definition. The transfer can appear soft, although thankfully there is no apparent edge enhancement to mar the presentation even further. Compression artifacts are also not a problem. Overall, pretty darn good.

Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?

Here's where this DVD gets it just right: this 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtrack is one of the better ones I've heard in many a month. Dialogue is spot-on, both in terms of being so well recorded and reproduced here with great clarity and heft. Stereo separation across the front soundstage is very tight, with the dialogue perfectly balanced with the effects and rock-ish score and songs. For what is essentially a small comedy, surround use is surprisingly aggressive, with some nice discrete effects that fully exploit the soundtrack's robust frequency response. The .1 LFE track is also forcefully rendered. This soundtrack rocks.

Also included are English subtitles and Closed Captions.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

School of Rock also gets the royal treatment in terms of extras. Not one but two screen- specific audio commentaries are most welcome: the first with Linklater and Black, who goes into his comic effect mode often but still doesn't take away from Linklater, and the second with the kids, which rises above novelty status because these talented youngsters possess wisdom far beyond there years. While fans actually interested in filmmaking will likely want to stick with the filmmaker track, the kids commentary is surprisingly good and may even be more fun. Both are worth a listen.

Next up is Lessons Learned on School of Rock, a 25-minute featurette with much EPK-style material, but since it focuses so heavily on Black and his performance, it's funny and fresh despite the bland format. Black's Pitch to Led Zeppelin may be the funniest extra here, however: in order to convince the monsters of classic rock to let Linklater and his team use "Immigrant Song" in the film, he and Jack Black made a public service announcement-style pitch to the boys. They got it - long live rock 'n' roll.

Also included are two video diary-style extras: MTV's Diary of Jack Black is a day-in-the-life 16-minute affair that is pretty friggin' hilarious. Black enlisted old-school Tenacious D. video helmer Liam Lynch to follow him around for 24 hours, and while the results are very MTV, there are moments of greatness that make it worth sitting through. And there is also the Kid's Video Diary, a short look at their experience screening the film at the Toronto Film Festival last year. Super-cute.

Rounding out this set are some anamorphic widescreen theatrical trailers for School of Rock, The Stepford Wives and Paycheck, plus a public service announcement for VH1's "Save the Music" program.

DVD- ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in your PC?

Unusual for a Paramount disc, we get some weblinks and a cute little template called Dewey Finn's History of Rock which categorizes much of the film's rock curriculum in kid-digestible form. Kinda fun.

Parting Thoughts