909

This is another woulda, shoulda, coulda film. Instead, it relies on exaggerated generalities for it's laughs...Why? Aren't we all a little tired of "punk" meaning dressing like Cyndi Lauper's cast-offs?

I appreciate the fact that the kids in the film actually play their instruments...that's a huge improvement over the typical Hollywood rock film, but do we really need another film where the music is incredibly vanilla, but is passed off as radical?

The film's plot is a bit of a mess with sub-plots that go nowhere and actors who are given one note and one note only to play (like the musical analogy there?) Joan Cusack spends the entire film reacting horrified or being uptight...Wow! Couldn't see THAT character a mile away, huh? Dewey's roommate is whipped and his girlfriend is bossy. In EVERY scene? Why are all of these people so 2 dimensional? Does Hollywood have so little trust in the viewer to present fully developed characters who have levels and contradictions?

SCHOOL OF ROCK is a disapointment...Mostly because it could have been really funny and it just laid there like my ex-wif....Well, you know what I mean.

What a godawful piece of tripe this is. It's the worst kind of derivative junk that tries to pass itself off as cinema. It take the narrative style from "Stand By Me" and inserts it into a lame Little Rascals-esque kiddie film. The acting is lousy with the depth of emotion ranging from kids screaming to, well, kids screaming. There's an awful lot of screaming in the film...I'm sure this was supposed to be funny, but it REALLY gets on the nerves after a while. And while I'm at it....What is blue blazes was an excellent actor like James Earl Jones doing in this movie? You're supposed to believe that this man was a baseball player who played with Babe Ruth. But of course, there's the problem of the fact that the league wasn't integrated at that point. Maybe they made Jones' character blind so he wouldn't have to look at nauseatingly trite dialogue...I know I was wishing for a fastball to come knock out my lights so I wouldn't have to sit through the rest of this. My 8 year old nephew was bored by this movie. "Stinks on ice" was his succinct review.

Tripe of this sort never ceases to amaze me. What's worse, though, is the presence of good actors such as Gabriel Byrne. I hope that everyone was paid well for this film because I don't think they were doing it for artistic acclaim!

Shelley Long has no business on the big screen...just as she had no business on television - and THAT'S saying something considering the sub-par acting that usually goes on in the world of TV actors.

I have no problem with silly movies and cute story lines. But when a film is so obviously leading in one way with characters drawn with the largest strokes...it becomes a cartoon...and not a very funny one at that.