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100First and foremost a very funny film, and a very pleasant one that doesn't really have a villain. Credit for its hilarity goes largely to Black, who gives the performance of his career as a character who might have seemed merely coarse and crude in less gifted hands.
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All Black, all the time, and could easily have been an exhausting mess. But the movie is coherent, hilarious and surprisingly sweet.
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100The School of Rock was made by gifted veterans of the American indie scene, but it's still the most unlikely great movie of the year.
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100It's a bravura, all-stops-out, inexhaustibly inventive performance. I don't know how much was improvised, and how much comes from White's sharp screenplay, but Black may never again get a part that displays his mad-dog comic ferocity to such brilliant effect. He, and the movie, kick ass.
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100Three of the hippest indie film princes make a perfect commercial comedy.
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100This joyous farce is a big, big deal, and Jack Black is nothing less than majestic as a scruffy, irreverent rocker passing himself off as a pedagogue in a private school.
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100An exuberant, raucous and thoroughly endearing comedy
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91Crowd-pleasing, feel-good stuff.
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90School of Rock kicks ass. It's one movie that definitely goes to eleven.
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90Linklater, whose previous movies include "Slacker," "Before Sunrise," and "Waking Life," may be the most versatile director of his generation. School of Rock is his most unabashedly mainstream movie by far, and yet it's commercial in the best way.
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90For all its slickness, School of Rock has a let's-put-on-a-show quality that touches you in the most direct way a movie can. It's as if the filmmakers had said, "I'd like to teach the world to kick butt--in perfect harmony."
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90A movie for almost everyone, from boomer parents (who remember their teens and twenties) to their teenage kids (who can't wait to get started with same). And if there's anyone who can bring so many into the same mosh pit, it's Black, who so occupies the role you can't believe he's acting.
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89As far from "Slacker" as you could possibly get and still be using a motion-picture camera, The School of Rock is nonetheless pure Linklater, pure rock & roll, and pure fun. Gabba, gabba, hey!
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88If quirky, independent, grown-up outsider filmmakers set out to make a family movie, this is the kind of movie they would make. And they did.
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88The movie is the cinematic equivalent of a near-perfect three-minute pop song. It makes you laugh, smile and tap your toes over a brisk 88 minutes, and when it's finished, you're ready to hit repeat.
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88School of Rock may be to Black what "The Nutty Professor" was to Jerry Lewis, or "Groundhog Day" was to Bill Murray - that rare, perfectly tailored opportunity to play against one's broadest impulses. Not to neutralize them, necessarily, but to tame them and turn them into something very human and charming.
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88It plays even more like a bent version of Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" for the new millennium. Slinging a line of bull but displaying genuine affection for the youngsters he's bamboozling.
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88Utterly adorable.
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88An unexpectedly exuberant, only mildly subversive celebration of music, learning, and going all out for what you love.
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80The film hits another comic mother lode in the byplay between Black and Cusack.
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80The feel-good hit of the year thus far. Be warned, though: if you think a little Jack Black goes a long way, then this isn't for you.
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80In its cornball "Let's put on a show!" crudeness, its Cuisinart collapsing of rock history, and its reduction of the ambiguous, libidinal revolt led by Elvis and Mick and Johnny Rotten and Kurt Cobain to the level of pampered middle-school posturing, School of Rock is a clever and sometimes a beautiful thing.
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80Though tagged as the director's bid for commercial success, School Of Rock is as philosophical in its own way as "Slacker" or "Waking Life." It was made by people who not only know the music well enough to create magnificent flowcharts around it, but also understand how a simple, soul-stirring rock song can seem revolutionary.
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80Jack Black is consistently hilarious--and not just in his dreams of moshpit glory.
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80Takes a clever premise and Black's unflagging manic energy and comes up with a pleasing mainstream comedy that uses new people and attitudes to entertain in old-fashioned ways.
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80A very funny for-kids-of-all-ages delight that should catapult Mr. Black straight to the top of the A-list of Hollywood funnymen.
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80The kids, all real musicians performing, are wonderful, and so is Black; Joan Cusack is both charming and funny as the principal.
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75Even education can't kill the demon of fun in Black. Enroll in his class and you won't stop laughing.
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75The movie is a polished (and irresistible) piece of crowd-pleasing formula and deserves to become a monster hit. But it is also a perfect showcase for the volcanic talents of the rotund comedian/musician/all-around wildman.
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75One of the year's most consistently entertaining and ingratiating movies, building to an inspirational climax that's as rousing as it is predictable.
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75It's one of the great have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too performances of the year.
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75Linklater powers the film with the energy and attitude and beat of his soundtrack.
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70Still, the big-show musical payoff is good fun, and Black and his little doppelgangers have it all over "Daddy Day Care."
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70School of Rock, populated by bright-shiny faces given a "Revenge of the Nerds" happy ending, is light and meaningless but never worthless. It merely aspires to be a good time and is just that and nothing more, a grin-worthy buzz that wears off in the parking lot.
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70Combined with hilarious physical business and perfectly overearnest delivery of pseudocool lines like, "Let your fingers do the rocking!," he (Black) pretty much single-handedly keeps the formulaic progress funny.
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63A picture with pop's delicious energy yet none of its attendant risk, a flick that no one will love but everyone will like.
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63Like the particular brand of music Dewey espouses, this is a movie more concerned with exploiting rock than understanding it.
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60The kids -- most of them first-timers cast for natural charisma and musical ability -- steal the show, and a talented supporting cast helps take the edge off Black's manic antics.
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60Anyone who loves rock music will appreciate the script's insights into the form and its history.
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50Feel-good tripe: a string of clichés lashed together by a formulaic plot that features underwritten characters and sit-com style humor.
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50Somewhere inside "School" lurks a heartwarming or hilarious movie, perhaps both.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 234 out of 246
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Mixed: 2 out of 246
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Negative: 10 out of 246
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JesseL.10
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10It is an overall very good time. This is one of Jack Black's best moments because of a great performance and unique plot.
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AleeH.3