Black's market
School of Rock, we salute you.

By David Fear

STAR VEHICLES ARE a funny thing, manufactured to move forward with a single-minded purpose: to make their star shine supernova bright. They're generally a drag, unless you're a die-hard fan who doesn't mind something existing solely to highlight, say, Julia Roberts's ability to cry at will. When a customized film comes along that delivers on the promise of a performer's potential, however, you're reminded why star vehicles are the cornerstone of the dream factory assembly line. They can turn a performer's strengths into iconography. They may even, on rare occasion, rock your world.

School of Rock is nothing if not an unabashed stage for its talent's singular strutting and fretting, although unlike most celluloid shrines, its pedigree wouldn't necessarily scream "Tinseltown sure thing!" Its director is Richard Linklater, the Austin, Texas, auteur best known for personalized indie quirk, and its author is Mike White, screenwriter of quintessential Sundance strange-love tale Chuck and Buck. Even its story, the old sap magnet about a superficial dude who learns a few life lessons thanks to some screen-sassy kids, carbon dates comedywise somewhere around 1986 and would seem destined for little more than the "Savage" Steve Holland treatment. But the driver of this vehicle is Jack Black.

You may know Black as one half of Tenacious D, the acoustic duo dedicated to mocking cock-rock clichés in the key of hipster irony. Using their delusion to rhapsodize about metal's dwarf-king Dio and what amazing rock stars they are (their best song is all about them paying tribute to having written the greatest song in the world), they somehow manage to toss off vintage tasty licks and swooping falsettos that, to quote them, "will rock your fucking socks off!" Or maybe you remember him as High Fidelity's second banana, who then proceeded to pop up in films wherein his very presence was supposed to be hilarity enough. On-screen, there was always the sense that his spastic-tot energy was being held in check while the bigger fish swam their laps, and fans (Blackheads?) would glumly file out of theaters, hoping their boy might one day get his big break (playing against waifs in fat suits doesn't count).

He's found it in Dewey Finn, a wanna-be rock god stuck in perpetual adolescence who refuses the request of his long-suffering roommates (Sarah Silverman and screenwriter White) to give in to the rat race: "I serve society" he exclaims, "by rocking!" After our hero's band gives him the boot, however, his plan to win the local Battle of the Bands showdown, and thus secure the rent, falls apart. Masquerading as his flatmate – a substitute teacher – to get some quick dough, he fills in at a prep school for the gifted. It turns out that some of his fourth-graders are musical prodigies, however, which inspires Dewey to start an opportunistic class project titled "Rock Band" – with the final to be held at the contest.

If there's a Mighty Ducks-flavored bad taste in your mouth after reading that synopsis, you're not alone. But what Black and his partners in crime do with the material makes a world of difference. Any hint of sentimentality is bowled over by hitching the reworked warhorse narrative onto the comedian's meta-rock star/wild-man persona, and his territorial pissings all over the underdog material turn this into a series of sublimely ridiculous Black-out sketches. A Power Chords 101 lesson ends in mimeographed metal glory, with Dewey hitting an E minor, then pathetically kicking over a desk. A call for the kids to find their inner Joplins and Jaggers is accompanied by a hilarious D-like ditty titled "Step Off." Every line or small comic bit somehow filters through Black's misguided cockiness and intensity, emerging smothered in his sui generis cracked wit. Even the requisite rock show ending, where a gaggle of kids made to look like T. Rex-meets-Hot Topic's punked up offspring, avoids the gag reflex thanks to a certain actor's ill-fitting Angus Young getup.

It's not to say this School is strictly a solo album. Black's partners in crime contribute grace notes by the gallon – Linklater and White's offbeat sensibilities with the story, Joan Cusack's channeling of a Margaret Dumount foil, and the real-life musical wunderkinder that make up the class are all invaluable additions. But it is Black's spotlight all the way – his East of Eden, his Beverly Hills Cop. He takes his breakthrough moment and runs with it, and he's largely responsible for the guilty, giddy contact high buzzing around your skull afterward. Those of us who kept hope that he'd finally find something worthy of his peculiar chops can raise the devil-horn salute.

'School of Rock' opens Fri/3 at Bay Area theaters. See Movie Clock, in Film listings, for show times.