The Merits of "School of Rock"

I've ended up being engaged in an interesting Facebook discussion today, born of this tweet / status update I posted this morning:

"I've officially decided that School of Rock is one of the finer films ever made."

Never expected it to turn into an actual discussion of modern American cinema. I expected to get some guff on it, sure, but my friend Ted dropped an immediate challenge of a funny but more intense nature:

"Um, yeah just to inform you. Your judgment has been put under review by the FCAA (Film Critics Association of America). Please submit form 437b along with two essays on (1) the state of American cinema post 1977 and (2) the future of movie making. The board will be in contact with you to schedule a formal hearing after an oversight comittee has had an opportunity to review your submission."

After calling him a dick, I decided to put some thought into the questions posed. After all, I'd just had my allergy shots and was sitting around a waiting room otherwise bored, so I might as well do this, right?

Below, my responses, organized and slightly cleaned up grammatically but otherwise not adulterated:

I understand your concern, though. It took me awhile to gather the courage to come out of that shame spiral and decide that I wasn't a bad person for having such aberrant sensibilities.

Essay #1: Movies after 1977 are better than movies before. Fewer dances and musical props, more guts and blood and other visceral pleasures. The darkness and moral ambiguity of modern cinema suffers in many ways from a lack of the cup-half-full, pie-eyed optimism of the old days, but we identify more strongly with films that reflect our reality. The only down-side is the remake- and sequel-happiness of modern days, which insults us in the obvious cash-grabby greed that is demonstrated.

Essay #2: the future of movie making is bleak. The last 30 years have shown a mautration of movies and their audiences, coupled with advances in movie-making technology that added to and enhanced the story being told. Now, more often than not, stories are flimsy excuses for sensory overload by effects that are ultimately moving backwards because ... See Morethey are too-rendered and thus unbelievable. The afore-mentioned reliance on rehashing or re-tooling old stories is a crutch for the incredible shrinking aptitude of modern writers.

I realize that in essay #1 I attacked pie-eyed optimism and musical crutches, both of which are on display in School of Rock. An essential element of humanity is the ability to be (relatively) unapologetically hypocritical. Deal with it.

I believe these points to all be legitimate, honest, and true.

I was then accused of being a fan of Year One, starring Jack Black and Michael Cera. This is untrue; I've never seen it and never will, but it led me to a brief discussion of the merits of Mr. Black:

"Really haven't cared for him in anything else. Nacho Libre has a couple of good points but generally tedious. That one w/ him and Gwyneth Paltrow as a fatty is schlock. Year One just looks like a bad idea; generally the only stone age comedy I'll admit to enjoying was Caveman with Ringo Starr."

Ted noted that he was good in The Holiday. I don't disagree, but I think that movie is enjoyable more for Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz than for Black, who is essentially a prop throughout it.

There is no real reason that anyone should really care about all of this, of course. But it was a fun enough exercise for me that I thought it merited breaking my long silence on this blog, no matter how briefly.

Happy New Year, by the way!