School of Rock

"I pledge allegiance to the band of Mr. Schneebly..."


School of Rock is a 2003 comedy starring Jack Black and Joan Cusack.

Dewey Finn (Black) is a rock musician whose Control Freak tendencies, among other things, get him kicked out of the band he founded. After some time of doing nothing, it becomes apparent that he had better find another job to pay the rent.

As it happens, an elite private school in the area has an opening for a teacher. Receiving a phone call intended for his apartment roommate, Ned Schneebly (Mike White), Dewey fakes his roommate's identity and gets hired. He takes the job initially planning to do as little as possible, but soon discovers that the kids have musical talent. After that, he changes his plans drastically, turning the class entirely into a music class about the history of rock, and preparing his kids to enter a band contest and beat his old band.

Tropes used in School of Rock include:
  • Asian and Nerdy: Lawrence.
  • Blithe Spirit
  • Bottle Fairy: Ms. Mullins. Just add "Edge of Seventeen" as BGM.
  • Camp Gay: Billy, the boy placed in charge of designing their costumes. Names Liza Minelli as his favorite "rocker".
    • Hey, Freddie Mercury was a fan of Liza Minelli. Is that so wrong? ...Oh wait.
    • No one ever said it was "wrong".
    • It's highly doubtful that a prepubescent kid would identify as gay; it's probably just the mannerisms.
      • Reportedly, the character wasn't written this way. However, the director saw that playing up the stereotypes would bring in laughs. As a result, screenwriter Mike White (an open bisexual with a gay father) disowned the final film.
  • The Cameo: If you've never heard of these guys, you'll miss it, but The Mooney Suzuki are briefly seen backstage at the battle of the bands. Sammy James Jr., the lead singer, co-wrote the song "School of Rock" for the movie along with Mike White.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Parent's Night is mentioned, Jack Black's character promptly forgets about it and does his own thing...and then half an hour later the plot element comes to fruition. And because he hasn't been planning during that intervening half hour of plot, Hilarity Ensues.
    • Could also be considered Foreshadowing, as the principal stresses how important it is.
  • Class Representative: Summer. Complains when told that the class no longer has to do any schoolwork.
  • Cool Teacher
  • Crack Defeat: The kids get beaten by No Vacancy (which just so happens to be the band that fired Dewey at the beginning of the movie), despite the entire crowd going crazy during their performance. They one-up the winners though, because the audience wants an encore.
  • Credits Brand Products: The open credits appear as various posters and on peoples' shirts in the bar.
  • Credits Gag: The movie ends with the characters' band playing a new song, the credits rolling through in front of them. Near the end of the credits Jack Black points them out claiming "I do not know that guy!" in song.
    • New song in terms. They're improvising over ACDC's "It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)", which they started to play at their Battle of the Bands encore, and rolled into the final scene.
    • On TBS, the credits don't appear in the final scene (they are replaced with a Credits Pushback afterwards), ruining the gag.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: Dewey telling the kid's parents what he taught their kids goes something like this: 'Math, science, uh.. geography, Latin, Spanish, French, Latin... Did I say math already?'
    • Also, "It will test your head, and your mind, and your brain."
  • E=MC Hammer: Dewey writes E=mc^2 on the board while pretending to teach the children something. Played with slightly in that he is totally clueless about teaching and this was presumably the only vaguely mathematical formula he could remember, and the school principal doesn't bat an eyelid when she walks into the room, even though the children are preteens.
  • Everybody Owns a Ford: All the parents' cars are Volvos. Probably done for laughs, not Product Placement, unless Volvo itself has a sense of humor about its' stereotypical owners.
  • Everyone Chasing You: After the parents take one of Dewey's remarks literally, see That Came Out Wrong below.
  • Expy: Jack Black is playing his exact same character from Tenacious D, only without the constant swearing as the movie is PG-13.
  • Fantasy-Forbidding Father
  • Fauxreign Pronounciation: One-shot joke. "Actually, it's Shnay-blay."
  • Filming for Easy Dub: Instead of Jack Black, it's a guitar. In the climax of the film, Jack breaks out a guitar solo, but his guitar NEVER faces the camera, so you don't see the necessary hand movements to perform said solo.
    • Possibly Lampshaded afterwards by Mullins asking him if that was really him playing. (It wasn't - the DVD commentaries reveal Jack Black doesn't really play electric guitar that well. Most of the guitar playing his character did was actually him miming to a pre-recorded guitar track. He does occasionally play himself, though, such as when teaching Zack the riff to "Smoke on the Water" by Deep Purple.)
  • Genre Killer: This movie more or less killed the inspirational teacher sub-genre in favor of a variation of Adults Are Useless using teachers. Newer attempts at relaunching the genre (Freedom Writers, Larry Crowne) have failed in favor of films inspired by this (such as Bad Teacher).
  • Girlish Pigtails: Marta, one of the back-up singers. She had them braided and below the jaw line in a dreary, bored fashion (the dull uniform doesn't help), until the very end at their concert where they're high up and loose.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: Freddy wears a pair during the Battle of the Bands, Rule of Cool most likely.
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: Miranda Cosgrove before Drake and Josh and iCarly as Summer.
  • Hollywood Tone Deaf: Summer. You didn't expect Miranda to sing badly, do you?
    • The DVD commentaries tell us (and prove to us) that she actually sings really well, and she had to be taught how to sing badly.
  • Incurable Cough of Death: The kids' Bad Bad Acting for their "fatal illnesses" to get them into the Battle of the Bands.
  • Large Ham: Jack Black...what did you expect?
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Dewey.
  • The Man: Ms. Mullins.
  • Man Child: Dewey. He's an immature slacker who has no life outside of rock; however, it helps him find a common language with kids.
  • Meddling Parents: All of the kids have them. Granted it's a high-profile school.
  • Medium Awareness, No Fourth Wall: Only during the credits.
  • Mouthy Kid: Freddy. Dewey had to save his skin at one point.
  • The Power of Rock
  • "The Reason The World Sucks" Speech: "Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can't win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you're just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by The Man. The Man, oh, you don't know the Man. He's everywhere. In the White House... down the hall... Ms. Mullins, she's the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he's burning down The Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock 'n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don't waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome 'cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!"
  • Recycled in Space: Mr. Holland's Opus...with a really bad teacher.
  • Rock'n'Roll Teacher: Dewey.
  • Rummage Sale Reject: A lot of the kids' costumes during the climactic show end up looking like this.
  • Sassy Black Girl: Alicia.
    • Tomika, initially a Shrinking Violet, is on her way of becoming one (the way she shuts Freddy up is priceless).
  • Save Our Students: Played with. The kids didn't really need saving, but a fair few of them come out happier than they ever were.
  • Serious Business: "One great rock show can change the world."
  • Shout-Out: Possibly with Freddy, his last name is Jones.
    • There's also this sneaky homage to Black's Channel 101 series Computer Man.
    • Dewey's school uniform at the Battle of the Bands is a shout-out to Angus Young.
    • Dewey's improvised song about math ends with him calling nine "a magic number."
  • The Slacker: Dewey.
  • Take That: There was one against Meg White of The White Stripes, for her minimalistic drumming style.
    • And the above quoted slam against MTV.
  • That Came Out Wrong: When Dewey is trying to explain to the parents of his students about how what he's doing is good, and says "I have been touched by your kids...and I'm pretty sure I've touched them." Cut to Dewey running through the halls, with the parents chasing after him.
  • Title Drop: It's the name of the band, repeated with great emphasis by Jack Black. It's also the name of the song the band plays at the Battle of the Bands.
  • Waxing Lyrical: When Dewey is trying to bluff his way through a conversation with teachers while posing as a substitute, starts reciting snatches from Whitney Houston's "Greatest Love of All". Someone asks "Isn't that a song?", and he denies it.
    • His Rousing Speech concludes ""We roll tonight to the guitar bite, and for those about to rock, I salute you", from ACDC's "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)".
  • Very Loosely Based on a True Story
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