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Verdict: Jack Black rules and his movie rocks!

By ELEANOR RINGEL GILLESPIE
The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hello, Jack Black.

“The School of Rock” may be the best “inspirational teacher” movie ever made. It's certainly the funniest.

Dewey Finn (Black) is a rocker without a clue. Tired of his showboating power licks and stage diving, the band he founded fires him. And his old pal Ned (Mike White, who also wrote the script) has buckled under to his shrewish girlfriend and demands Dewey pay his share of the rent or move out.

Which means getting a job. Which for Dewey (who protests he serves society by rocking) means pretending he's Ned when a posh prep school calls, looking for a substitute teacher. Faced with a class full of earnest fifth-graders in spiffy school uniforms, who've been brought up on good grades and gold stars, Dewey does what any mangy rock slacker would do. He gives them all-day recess.

But these kids actually like learning stuff, so Dewey proposes a class project. They'll create a band and enter the upcoming Battle of the Bands. Plus, Dewey means to pass on to them the gospel of rock — that it's not about scoring chicks or getting wasted, but about sticking it to The Man. “One great rock concert can change the world,” he exults with late-'60s fervor.

Yeah, I know, at this point, “The School of Rock” sounds like “The Fighting Temptations” with school kids or “Mr. Holland's Opus” gone punk. But it's nothing of the sort. That's because the film is suffused with Black's passion for rock and the rock pantheon, be it Elvis, Jimi, Led Zeppelin or Nirvana. That these kids know more about Britney than Janis is an affront to his soul.

You can't say that Black is the whole show. The script's too good, the direction too smart (Richard Linklater), the kids too appealing. Even Joan Cusack, stuck in the tired role of the uptight principal, comes off well. When the woman confesses to a secret thing for Stevie Nicks, you believe it because it's Cusack saying it.

Yet Black is the motor, the irreverent whirling dervish of rock lore and rock madness that keeps the movie spinning at full throttle. Black has his own band, Tenacious D, and his connection to the music isn't feigned. You can feel it when he tells a shy keyboardist that of course he's cool; he's in the band and that makes him de facto cool. Or when Black slides his legs out, lowers his head and teaches the lead guitarist an “antique technique called power stance.” He even does tender without missing a beat, giving a timid backup singer with a powerhouse voice the best chubby-girl advice I've ever heard: “Everybody wants to party with Aretha!”

Not since Walter Matthau played a lovable goof-off in “The Bad News Bears” has an adult actor established such an effortless and seemingly spontaneous rapport with elementary school-age kids. And Black has the most dangerous eyebrows this side of Jack Nicholson.

“The School of Rock” is going to surprise a lot of people. So is Black. As intoxicating as the whiskey whose name he shares, he blasts off the screen with Dionysian energy and one-of-a-kind style and humor.