IS this a school project? "Yes, and it's a requirement, and it may sound easy but nothing could be harder. It will test your head, and your mind... and your brain too."

So says Jack Black's stoner Dewey Finn, embarrassing sacked guitarist, failed rock wannabe and now unqualified teacher. Depressed and lost, needing money and facing eviction, he has adopted the alias of his dull landlord, Ned Schneebly (Mike White), to take up a substitute teaching post at a prim and proper American private school.

Turning up in his clapped-out, smoke-burping old van, and clothes that marry AC/DC's Angus Young to Robert Donat's Mr Chips, Dewey has been put in charge of a class of nerdy 11 year olds.

Given his paucity of knowledge of the fifth grade curriculum, he decides there is only one way to relate to his elite new charges and stop their sniping. He must scrap conventional lessons in favour of his secret school project, Rock Band, his one specialist subject and a sneaky way to raise money from winning a battle of the bands competition.

Each child is assigned a role: the monitor as band manager; the nascent gay one as the costume designer; the lippy, stroppy one as the drummer; the piano prodigy as the re-awakening of Rick Wakeman on keyboards.

As is the way with these rites-of-passage movies, the shy one turns out to have a belter of a voice, just in time for the School Of Rock band's all-important debut at the regional talent contest. However, how long can they keep the project secret from their parents and the school's strict head, Principal Mullins (Joan Cusack).

Richard Linklater's affectionate comic adventure works for young audiences and old rockers alike. School rebellion, from Alice Cooper to Grange Hill, always goes down well, and there is plenty of energy and fizz and fun in the blossoming of the kids as they collude with Dewey in defying the school's starchy traditions to "raise the goblet of rock".

Meanwhile, Jack Black already has rock credibility aplenty from his record-store antics in High Fidelity and his own music project Tenacious D. Those musicologists who enjoyed This Is Spinal Tap, Still Crazy or A Mighty Wind will feel a knowing glow at The School of Rock's impeccable knowledge of all things over the top in the world of rock and metal, courtesy of Mike White's deft script.

Jack Black's ebullient comic performance is a rock'n'roll variation on Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, but more innocent and joyful without the darkness of Peter Weir's film. His enthusiasm will have the air guitarist in all of us reaching for the skies.

Updated: 16:18 Thursday, February 05, 2004