School of Rock Critic Reviews

An exuberant, raucous and thoroughly endearing comedyRead the full review

For 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."Read the full review

Combined 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.Read the full review

A 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.Read the full review

Feel-good tripe: a string of clichés lashed together by a formulaic plot that features underwritten characters and sit-com style humor.Read the full review

This 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.Read the full review

Takes 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.Read the full review

The film hits another comic mother lode in the byplay between Black and Cusack.Read the full review

It 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.Read the full review