Disclaimer: I adored School of Rock. That said:
But School of Rock was written with a new breed of adults in mind—and their driving fear isn’t that the youth of tomorrow will fall prey to what Frank Sinatra once described as “the martial marching music of every side-burned delinquent.” It’s that the kids might never get their rocks off in the first place. When Black first meets his school kids, who are young enough to be Dylan’s grandkids, Led Zeppelin takes a backseat to Latin, and rock ‘n’ roll is as sexy and redemptive, in their eyes, as a square dance at a retirement home. Which might explain why Stephen Holden’s New York Times review mentioned in passing that hip-hop has usurped rock’s place in the public imagination; if he’s right, it makes sense that the substitute teacher played by Jack Black should have to introduce his charges to the pleasures of rocking out rather than the other way around.
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