The School of Rock is that rare thing: a kid's film that doesn't patronise or pander to its target audience and has enough wit to also entertain adults. Jack Black is outstanding as Dewey Finn, an unemployed rock guitarist who passes himself off as a supply teacher and enlightens the sheltered pupils of a posh private school with the joys of rock 'n' roll. Joan Cusack provides excellent comic support as the school's headmistress who is twitchily uptight but by no means unsympathetic. Director Richard Linklater (the indie darling best known for Slacker and Dazed and Confused) deftly avoids the saccharine schmaltz and pre-programmed plotlines that can easily ruin these kind of films. He miraculously manages to extract not one, but more than half a dozen enjoyable, natural performances from his precocious young cast. Rock 'n' roll purists may lament the inevitable absence of the sex 'n' drugs components, but this is expertly crafted escapism and a near perfect family movie.

Fired from his band and hard up for cash, guitarist and vocalist Dewey Finn finagles his way into a job as a fifth-grade substitute teacher at a private school, where he secretly begins teaching his straight-A students the finer points of rock 'n' roll and the power of sticking it to the man. But as the school’s stern principal closes in and the Battle of the Bands looms, Dewey risks everything to prove that rock 'n' roll can change lives.