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Just ask Principal Mullins (Joan Cusack), who has to shout at Dewey to stop him belting out a song inside his van. When he engages in song, his only trajectory is up. Black’s histrionics work in a similar way.
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He’s the kind of actor whose eureka moments (I’m thinking of the courtroom sequence) are so bright, you half-expect to see a lightbulb hovering over his head. The closest comparison might be Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, whose gift for gab and childish antics work in harmony as his cursed personalities tear each other to shreds. It requires a certain kind of magic, as well as a director who can provide the right platform. Not many performers transform into their characters as effortlessly as Black does here. When he points at someone with a question, a task, a jolt of inspiration, his eyes expand, as though he’s just learned a secret and forged a deeper bond because of it. Black says more with his index fingers in this movie than most people can with 10 pages of dialogue. But it’s his physicality and dexterity that accents the high notes in his arsenal - the eyebrow twirls, the air guitar, the white-winged dove pantomiming. In School of Rock, an entire scene in which Dewey hosts an impromptu participatory song about math (did you know nine is a magic number?) is built around that very characteristic. It’s easy to remember Black that way: a hyperactive sound machine, erupting into song and dance at a moment’s notice. Two decades later, School of Rock has remained the crowning achievement of his career, the rare perfect convergence of an actor and a character, crystallizing his musical expertise, innate kid-actor chemistry and man-child enthusiasm. Most notably, though, it epitomized the Jack Black experience. Throughout its steady run on cable, it’s influenced new generations, with a run on Broadway, Nickelodeon TV show and eventually an inspired TikTok trend. Upon its release in 2003, the family-friendly comedy turned into a box office smash (it made $131 million worldwide), and its fictional songs - specifically the anthem that concludes the movie - became instant earworms. In his pursuit, he throws out the curriculum, soundproofs the classroom and turns a bunch of privileged prep kids into strumming and drumming rebels. When he discovers his students have musical talent, he assembles them into a rock band, aiming to compete in a lucrative Battle of the Bands. Looking for a new way to pay rent, he poses as his educator roommate Ned Schneebly (Mike White, who also wrote the script) and takes a substitute teacher gig at a nearby private school. Released 20 years ago this week, the movie follows Dewey, an obnoxious guitarist who embarrasses himself with a face-planting stage dive that gets him kicked out of his own band. The scene all but confirms Black as a committed, chaotic and uninhibited tour-de-force and proves School of Rock could never work without him. But you’re not hardcore unless you live hardcore, so Black goes for broke, using his character’s adversity as a creative opportunity to unleash his most comedic, artistic, authentic self. “Legend of the Rent,” the title of this proposed headbanger, is about an unemployed grown man lacking the funds to stay in his apartment.
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Why else would director Richard Linklater capture this maniacal musician’s two-minute performance in one take, starting in close-up and slowly pulling back until its high-decibel finale? He knows there’s no reason to cut away - not when Black is air-plucking his guitar’s ascending lines, stomping his heel in propulsive rhythm and Irish jigging in rapid succession. It’s only 30 minutes into School of Rock, but you can tell this is Jack Black’s defining moment. Nearly out of breath, he concludes with a final sustained note, an imaginary explosion and raining confetti. Then he turns his mouth into a five-piece band, pivoting from a percussive bass line, to a face-melting guitar lick, to a Hawaii Five-O drum beat, to backup-singer falsettos. In the midst of reciting his opening lyrics, Dewey interjects with more atmospheric details - “a thin layer of fog comes in around my ankles” - which means his roadies will need to find dry ice. So he relents, takes out his pitch pipe and shares his vision: “It starts off with a dark stage, and then a beam of light, and you can see me and my guitar,” he says softly. Still, his class of newbie musicians wants to hear what their substitute teacher has cooked up for their upcoming rock show. It’s not ready yet - he wrote it in 15 minutes, he says, but he promises it’s awesome.