Rock School review
This is a movie about an aggressive but likeable wild-eyed rock n’ roll has-been who runs a school that teaches kids how to rock. Sound familiar? I’m sure the info is out there somewhere, but I could never find any confirmation that this true-to-life documentary was filmed before the Jack Black hit of a few years ago. If I had to bet, I’d wager that the real life Rock School depicted here was the springboard for “The School of Rock”, as there are just too darn many similarities. Jack Black played an audience-friendly version of Paul Green, the classic rock-obsessed, foul-mouthed teacher and founder of Rock School. The documentary completely belongs to Green, who hogs the camera and spazzes out at every opportunity, leaving one to wonder whether he’s always like this, or merely hamming it up for the film crew. He probably thought that this doc would be the best advertising imaginable for his school, and maybe it is, but more likely than not, it will serve as a warning for any parents considering enrolling their kids under his tutelage. That may end up being the primary function of this spotty yet watchable film. Filmmaker Don Argott lets his subject run wild, creating a shapeless hodge-podge of a movie. Unlike the recent “Lords of Dogtown”, this is one of the few documentaries that is not as good as its Hollywood dramatic version.
The focus of the film isn’t so much that this guy teaches kids how to rock as it about HOW he teaches them to rock. Green seems to go out of his way to use as many f-words while instructing his older students as possible. One gets the impression he shows little restraint with the younger ones, either. He is constantly yelling and belittling them, thus, as he claims, motivating them to show him that they really can do it. He claims that if you tell a kid he ought to be able to play a certain song, but don’t tell him that it happens to be one of the most advanced songs in all of rock music, eventually he’ll be able to play it. Lo and behold, he might be right. His teaching theory is put to the test in a big way at the end of the film when his advanced students travel to Germany to play complex Frank Zappa songs at a Zappa festival. The question of will they succeed or will they fail in front of a crowd of demanding fans is the only dramatic tension in the movie.
The preceding three-quarters of the movie lack any kind of rhyme or reason as what footage got used when. Yes, we meet the kids, and we meet Green, and we even get to see a few of the parents prepping their little rock n’ roll kids to play a live show (a moms frustration at not being able to fit the lines in the middle of the “Ozzy” Zs onto her son’s fingers with a makeup pencil was amusing), but none of it has enough coherency to make it feel legitimate. Technical errors like out-of-synch audio during certain interviews doesn’t help Argott’s professionalism, either. All in all, one gets the clear impression that the filmmaker went forward with this project because he knew that putting a camera on crazy Paul Green would be entertainment o’ plenty. Once one gets passed Green’s unorthodox language and threats to tell the students the torrid story of his first sexual experience in detail if they don’t shape up, his roughshod teaching techniques do provide food for thought and fuel for discussion. He just happens to be running a rock n’ roll school – the motivation backstory of which is bypassed to some degree in favor of more yelling, ranting, and “teaching”.
If Argott and/or Green did rip this idea off of Jack Black and Richard Linklater, then that’s just lame. I doubt they did, but it still doesn’t change the fact that the movie’s not very good, and the school’s techniques are a bit suspect as well. “Rock School” will entertain you if you go in not asking much of it. Beyond that, stick with “The School of Rock”, which is a fun and rockin’ movie that anyone can appreciate. But if you do go see the doc, don’t leave as soon as the credits start to roll, or you’ll miss Alice Cooper singing one of his hits with the students. One guess as to which song they play.
- Jim Tudor
