ROCK SCHOOL
Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
Newmarket Films
Grade: B
Directed by: Don Argot
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 3/3/05
Cast: Paul Green, Will, Asa, Tucker, C.J., Madi, Napoleon
Murphy-Brock
Lazy students want to get by with as little work as possible.
Why settle for C's in Camus and Calculus when you can ace gut
courses like Greek Mythology (Heroes for Zeros) and Earth
Science (Rocks for Jocks)? If your syllabus lists a course in
"How to Be a Rock Musician," wow, then you figure you can be
entertained by a subject in your milieu and get an A because
you probably know more than your teacher. In this case, not
likely. According to Don Argot, who directs "Rock School,"
teacher Paul Green's playing may be only slightly better than
that of young musical prodigy C.J., but his boot-camp methods
of instruction appear to endear him to his students whose 120
sets of parents pay for the after-school program.
"Rock School" does Michael Schorr's "Schultze Gets the Blues"
in reverse. While the title character of Schorr's movie, an
accordionist, is determined to go from his native Germany to the
American Bayou country to participate in a festival of cajun
music, teacher and students in "Rock School" are preparing for
a trip to a small town in Germany to strut their stuff at an annual
Frank Zappa festival.
I don't know if I'd want the type of teacher on display here, but
then again I'm not in the 9-17 age demo of his Paul Green
School of Rock Music. Violating all the tenets of Ed courses,
Green is not afraid to curse, to yell and scream, to badger his
students to practice practice practice with the aim of becoming
rock stars not only when they grow up but in the here-and-now.
He cusses freely. He dresses down with some cool T-shirts.
He's apparently intent on getting down to your pupils' level, and
all of his 120 students appreciate this Peter Pan presence in
their hip classrooms.
Green plays guitar only once in the documentary, showing
himself to be an accomplished musician but no Frank Zappa
and surely no Andres Segovia. I wish they'd have shown the
man's actually teaching. Does he go over the G7 chord? How
does he teach vibrato? The doc's omission makes room
instead for his showmanship as he alternates curses with
warbling of true inspiration.
None of the youngsters comes across as a person whose CD's
we might like to buy and play over and over with one exception.
C.J., an amazing performer on electric guitar, electrifies both the
audience and the kids at the school and proves himself the one
most likely to succeed as a rock star some eight or a dozen
years from now. For his reflective air, none in the cast can beat
Will, a kid who expresses himself articulately though he was
diagnosed with retardation ever since a botched Caesarian birth
resulted in his being tied with his umbilical chord a mite too long.
Having attempted suicide a few times, on one occasion by
wrapping a telephone wire around his neck (Freudian, no?) and
leaping from a banister, Will now states with equivocation that
he'd be a dead teen were it not for Green's in loco parentis
advisement. If a teacher can save just one kid–as the saying
goes–he's doing his job. When an instructor literally does so,
providing the tough love presumably deficient in that kids' life,
he's doing his job. Green does his job and then some.
Not Rated R. 93 minutes © 2005 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com
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