School of Rock

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details about School of Rock's classification and consumer advice lines
• a review of School of Rock completed by Young Media Australia (YMA) on 9 November 2003.

Overall comments and recommendations

Jack Black plays the character of Dewey Finn with great enthusiasm and the children who play the members of his class are very talented. The humour will appeal greatly to the young adolescents as there are some very funny scenes. However, there is much content in this movie that might be of concern to parents of young children. Dewey Finn is a cynical character who has been told all along he’s a ‘fat washed up loser’ and has had ‘his soul crushed’. He feels he has to get even with ‘the man’ (authority) but he has a determination which he manages to instil into the children along with a sense of self respect and identity. There is much deception and lying involved to the extent that Dewey tells the Battle of the Band’s organiser that the children are all ‘terminal’ so that he will let them enter.

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) and the associated consumer advice lines.

YMA review

This review of the movie School of Rock contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• use of violence
• material that may scare children
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie's message

A synopsis of the story

Dewey Finn eats, sleeps and breathes rock and roll music but unfortunately his other band members and fans don’t appreciate his talent. After an energetic head banging performance Dewey surfs into the crowd who fail to catch him and to make matters worse his own band fires him. Dewey falls into despondence which worsens when his flat mate Ned and girlfriend Patty insist that he must contribute to the rent or leave. Dewey receives a phone call meant for Ned from Horace Green Elementary School who is desperate for a relief teacher. Upon hearing the pay rate Dewey decides to impersonate Ned as he believes that relief teaching is merely baby sitting. Horace Green is the best elementary school in the state and the children are all in immaculate uniform, well behaved and very polite.

Dewey has no idea what to teach the children and tells them to have recess all day. The children want to be taught and complain that their parents’ money is being wasted. One morning Dewey listens in to a music lesson where he realises that the children are all very talented and so decides to teach them all about rock and roll music. He forms a band with the children and gives everyone a job to do such as lighting, security (to watch out for the principal) and even groupies. Dewey enters them into the Battle of the Bands but he has quite a few obstacles to overcome including winning over the principal so that he can take the children out on an excursion. The children all become enthusiastic and enter into the spirit of deceiving the principal and their parents. Dewey is eventually exposed but Summer who has been assigned as the band manager takes over and gets the band to the battle.

Use of violence

Research shows that children are at risk of learning that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution when violence is glamourised, performed by an attractive hero, successful, has few real life consequences, is set in a comic context and / or is mostly perpetrated by male characters with female victims, or by one race against another.

Repeated exposure to violent content can reinforce the message that violence is an acceptable means of conflict resolution. Repeated exposure also increases the risks that children will become desensitised to the use of violence in real life or develop an exaggerated view about the prevalence and likelihood of violence in their own world.

There is not much violence in this movie except for when Dewey crowd surfs and falls heavily onto the ground obviously hurting himself.

Material that may scare children

There is nothing scary in this movie.

Sexual references

There are a couple of sexual references including:

• Summer doesn’t want to be a groupie because they’re “sluts and they sleep with the band”.
• Dewey tells them that Rock is about “scoring chicks”.
• Dewey says that he thinks he’s sexy.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is no nudity or sexual activity.

Use of substances

There are a few instances of substance use including:

• Dewey tells the children on his first morning at school that he has a hangover.
• Dewey gets the principal drunk so that she will agree to let him take the children on an excursion.
• One of the boys, Freddy, gets into a van to play cards with some punk rockers who are drinking and smoking.
• Dewey tells the children the night before the event that there’s to be “no late night parties, no drinking tequila and no getting lucky”.
• Dewey says that Miss Mullins (the principal) must be “on crack”.

Coarse language

There is quite a bit of coarse language including the following:

• arse
• pissed off
• damn
• Oh my God
• Dewey prays to the god of rock to kick arse.

The movie's message

The take home message is probably that children should stand up for and believe in themselves.

Values parents may wish to encourage include:

• knowing that body size is not important
• talent should be encouraged
• believing in one’s self
• everyone is important.

Values parents may wish to discourage include:

• lying
• deceit
• having an ‘attitude’ rather than being compliant
• Dewey teaches the children that “they might as well just quit because they’ll never win”.
• name calling
• rule breaking.