School of Rock

[Pedro]

I really dug this movie alot.  I'm not sure what it is about Jack Black, but when he puts on that serious face I just start to laugh.  At first I found that the movie made me smile big more than anything but when stuff like the rare blood disease started going on I was laughing uncontrollably...

Edit - The movie also had some great stuff for rock'n'roll fans too.  The web of the different genres was awesomely cool...id like to take his rock history class

[metroshane]

Spider was absolutely the funniest thing in the movie.  I love his moves.

[Mesh]

If the movie had the gimmick of being about the characters first and foremost, a better and more enjoyable movie could have been made.

"...the gimmick of being about the characters...", eh?  Which characters was it "not about"?

The Gold Trumpet, making very little sense since at least 2002.

[Gold Trumpet]

"Gimmick" in that sentence was used in gist. I felt the movie was a pure genre movie. That doesn't mean it was about characters first and foremost, it means it is about the structure. Being about characters would break the tight genre structure surrounding it.

~rougerum

[Mesh]

I felt the movie was a pure genre movie.

What genre is School of Rock a pure example of? How does its structure place it within its given genre?

[Gold Trumpet]

1.) Comedy. 2.) In order to match lovable character (Black in new environment (teaching school), a ploy is created to somehow (little plausability) send him to new environment. At first, he is at odds with it but then the environment starts to grow on him (the kids in class) and he ends up caring for it. All this ends with him and everyone in the environment trying to achieve some task they thought impossible and strangely, they win (performing well as a band). This is the basic set up of most comedies. Example: Hardball, The Bad News Bears, About A Boy (with Grant getting kid to make friends), Little Giants, Necessary Roughness, The Major League movies, The Mighty Ducks movies. Topic of sports is most frequently used because it always ends with a "final game" to decide it all. This is similiar because it ends with a battle of the bands. They don't necessarily have to win actual game or event, but something greater than originally thought is always achieved. It is to supply heartfelt emotion.

~rougerum

[Mesh]

1.) Comedy. 2.) In order to match lovable character (Black in new environment (teaching school), a ploy is created to somehow (little plausability) send him to new environment. At first, he is at odds with it but then the environment starts to grow on him (the kids in class) and he ends up caring for it. All this ends with him and everyone in the environment trying to achieve some task they thought impossible and strangely, they win (performing well as a band). This is the basic set up of most comedies. Example: Hardball, The Bad News Bears, About A Boy (with Grant getting kid to make friends), Little Giants, Necessary Roughness, The Major League movies, The Mighty Ducks movies. Topic of sports is most frequently used because it always ends with a "final game" to decide it all. This is similiar because it ends with a battle of the bands. They don't necessarily have to win actual game or event, but something greater than originally thought is always achieved. It is to supply heartfelt emotion.

1.  OK, School of Rock is a "comedy."  Thanks.  My eyes are finally opened.  Why are you grading against the film for being what it is?  Why do you constantly insist on movies being somehow "outside" their given genres?  You think all "comedies" are weak because they're in the "comedy" genre?

2.  The structure you describe could be used in any number of genres.  Character enters new situation; rebels; accepts; achieves beyond all expectation and learns in the process.  Quick:  what film does that describe?  Answer:  about a billion.  That doesn't make it a weak film.  What determines its merit is how the film makes us laugh or think or cry within its given format: School of Rock is hilarious.  The premise is original enough to be engaging yet the rock cliches it skewers are so familiar, anyone can laugh at them.  It doesn't need to be an "intense character study that engages the audience at an intellectual level."  It just has to make funny things happen; this film does that....

3.  You still haven't even come near explaining your original complaint, that the movie should have focused on "characters" instead of its "comedy structure."  Which characters were underdeveloped?  Who did you need to know more about for this movie to work?  Who's "character arc," had it been more thoroughly explored, would've made this a funnier, tighter film?  Or are you, as usual, just full of hot air on this one?

[Gold Trumpet]

1.) Comedy. 2.) In order to match lovable character (Black in new environment (teaching school), a ploy is created to somehow (little plausability) send him to new environment. At first, he is at odds with it but then the environment starts to grow on him (the kids in class) and he ends up caring for it. All this ends with him and everyone in the environment trying to achieve some task they thought impossible and strangely, they win (performing well as a band). This is the basic set up of most comedies. Example: Hardball, The Bad News Bears, About A Boy (with Grant getting kid to make friends), Little Giants, Necessary Roughness, The Major League movies, The Mighty Ducks movies. Topic of sports is most frequently used because it always ends with a "final game" to decide it all. This is similiar because it ends with a battle of the bands. They don't necessarily have to win actual game or event, but something greater than originally thought is always achieved. It is to supply heartfelt emotion.

1.  OK, School of Rock is a "comedy."  Thanks.  My eyes are finally opened.  Why are you grading against the film for being what it is?  Why do you constantly insist on movies being somehow "outside" their given genres?  You think all "comedies" are weak because they're in the "comedy" genre?

2.  The structure you describe could be used in any number of genres.  Character enters new situation; rebels; accepts; achieves beyond all expectation and learns in the process.  Quick:  what film does that describe?  Answer:  about a billion.  That doesn't make it a weak film.  What determines its merit is how the film makes us laugh or think or cry within its given format: School of Rock is hilarious.  The premise is original enough to be engaging yet the rock cliches it skewers are so familiar, anyone can laugh at them.  It doesn't need to be an "intense character study that engages the audience at an intellectual level."  It just has to make funny things happen; this film does that....

3.  You still haven't even come near explaining your original complaint, that the movie should have focused on "characters" instead of its "comedy structure."  Which characters were underdeveloped?  Who did you need to know more about for this movie to work?  Who's "character arc," had it been more thoroughly explored, would've made this a funnier, tighter film?  Or are you, as usual, just full of hot air on this one?

1.) I am and also, am not. As originally stated, I enjoyed the movie. Its just that hype for this film suggested something above and beyond all other comedies. I disagree. Its just as my opinion states, this is a genre movie. Genres just have limitations to what they can and can not be.

2.) It achieves its purpose of engagement, yea, but other comedies do go further in being about more about characters. Also, they are just better written. To remind again, I liked the movie. It just isn't anything more than a genre movie.

3.) Finally, to explain myself in how I see this film as genre only: All characters are essentially playing characters that can be summed up in nearly one sentence and perfectly operate to push the structure. To roll down the line:

Jack Black is playing the same character as usual. Lovable dufus who is pigeonholed by everyone around him, but in his own way, rises up to meet challenges around him.

The best friend is used specifically in points only: He use to be in the music scene, but dropped and faced reality. His girlfriend, very one vowel stated, is against him continually being nice to Black in all his slob manner. Her purpose is to just be against Black. His purpose, at the end, is to tell the audience she is wrong and join see Black's band perform at the event. His line while leaving suggests end of relationship and further insistence she is wrong.

The kids are all lined up in an identity roll call of little situations for Black to deal with:

The smart ass girl who ends up being manager (forget name) is trying to make friends with everyone else and find a purpose worthy of her talents in the process.

The guitarist is the gifted, but disallowed to be able to create type. His situation is his dad is against rock n roll because he thinks its corruptive. The resolution of the family debacle is just that his dad sees how good his son is when performing and accepts rock n roll just like that.

The Liberacci admiring, very critical and gifted 10 year old is implausible because for the costumes he makes at the end are so thought out in a very gifted manner it is highly unlikely that he did it himself. The purpose of him is to say funny remarks (did well) and represent another niche of the class in personality standards.

All of the kids in the movie are in implausible situations and set ups, but are there to entertain and touch us on points correlating with movie and its build up to the final concert. Everything is really chordal in trying to affect you in certain ways through out the movie, very representative of the stiff genre. Not that all are bad, but definitely have limitations.

~rougerum

[modage]

couldnt punch-drunk love or any movie for that matter be summed up by boiling it down to the basic themes/character types?

Adam Sandler plays Barry Egan, a shy sad-sack with a great deal of repressed anger that occasionally bursts forth in sudden violent outrages, who falls in love with Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a co-worker of one of Barry's seven sisters. After calling a phone-sex line, Barry is extorted by bad-guy Dean Trumbell (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who eventually sends four goons to assault Barry and get the money.

now does that sound like anything profoundly interesting? no, but the rest lies in the film.

[Gold Trumpet]

Of course movies can be summed up to easy identities with characters, but as I was identifying these people, I did go further and show how through those sumnations, the characters actually really only lived through them. Nothing more. One can admire School of Rock and not deny its a very efficient, calculated existence as a comedy trying to make us laugh and care at point plots all over the movie. The difference in these plot points is that the characters stem from them instead of plot points stemming from characters.

~rougerum

[MacGuffin]

Jack Black Wants a Bite of Sabbath

LOS ANGELES - Jack Black, currently reveling in the success of "The School Rock," says he would like to bite into the role of Ozzy Osbourne in the proposed movie of the personality's life.

Osbourne is the lead singer for legendary metal band Black Sabbath who once bit the head off a live bat on stage. Black fronts the band Tenacious D, but has not eaten any live animals on stage, to our knowledge.

According to the New York Post, Black pleaded his case to Osbourne's wife Sharon on her syndicated talk show last week.

Black reportedly said, "Ozzy was a hero of mine as a kid and I have to say, I've been tracking the Ozzy film. If anyone's Ozzy, I'm Ozzy."

He'd better get in line, though. Other stars said to be interested in portraying the Prince Of Darkness include actors Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp. Heartthrob Depp described Ozzy as "a deeply fascinating human being."

Black has words for at least one of his competitors: "Colin Farrell, he's a good-looking dude, all right. He's kind of studly, whatever. He doesn't know the rock, though.

[NEON MERCURY]

..if jack black's name is thrown around for this how about  tom green they are both funny in their annoying no talented stupid kind of way..

[cron]

yeah,  at long last i got a confirmation from amazon.com

[ono]

I loved this movie.  Saw it tonight, and can safely say it's one of the best of the year.  Jack Black was great, as he always is, and the kids and Joan Cusack were great, and dodged cliches and stereotypes gracefully.  I had a huge smile the whole time through this movie, and when I left, my cheeks hurt from laughing so much.  I get the feeling everyone else in the audience felt the same way.  Pretty much all of them stayed put when the credits started to roll and the kids jammed with Dewey back at his place.  The music in this film was just so great, and the film delivered everything it promised and more.  This is one of those special surprise films of the year.  It helps if you like Jack Black.  **** (9/10)

[cron]

cover here.

by the way, how does one person link  an image like that to  here?