New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

The fun is short lived though, as they come to find the Wrath of Togar (fantasy RPG name alert) to be both swift AND brutal. And so it is that the two sides find themselves at an impasse. Will Riff get the Ramones to play the song she wrote for them? Does Kate ever discover cold fusion? Will Tom get laid before he's 30? Did Joey Ramone really have two Adam's apples? Most of these questions are answered by the end of the movie, and the other one will probably just keep you awake for a few nights.

The other thing you have to remember is that Rock 'n' Roll High School isn't what you'd call a traditional "story" in any sense of the word. It's structured less like it came from a screenplay and more like it might be a Saturday Night Live skit stretched out a bit and filled in with musical numbers and a couple of fake news bits. Which is I guess what this is, except that for the first hour or so, when it still feels like it's going to be a wickedly clever riff on high school movies in general. PJ Soles is sweet and sassy, Eaglebauer is funny, and Tom starts to grow on you only the way a man who owns a pimp van can.

And then it unravels like a cheap sweater, spinning off in a dozen directions at once and ending like the world’s most warped public service announcement. So no, this is not a “story.” It's a love letter to the idea of mindless rebellion and a total contempt for authority. It aims to be punk in the way the Ramones were when they started, but succeeds in the way the Ramones did after they succumbed to self parody. But does it really matter? This is about a girl who starts an insurrection at her high school because she wants to have sex with Joey Ramone. You know, lead singer of the World’s Ugliest Band. This is beyond fantasy.

It's an anthropology experiment. It's good dumb, juvenile fun - for an hour - and then it becomes a test of your tolerance for both lazy writing AND The Ramones. Both are best experienced in small doses and depending on who you are, 90 minutes may or may not be overdose. The Ramones were a fun band, and Rock 'n' Roll high school is - for just over half of its run time, a fun movie. But they're both an acquired taste. Serious inquiries only, folks.

If you've seen it before, it might not be as good as you remember and if you haven't, it's probably better than you thought. I guess it's not the Rock that's wrong with the story, it's the way the story just runs out of gas and rolls to a stop. There IS a lot going on in the movie’s last scene but it’s activity for its own sake. It’s meant to disguise the sound of the movie spinning its wheels for as long as it does over the last half hour. But in a funny case of life imitating art, it’s the same thing that sort of happened to Punk. Anger without direction, rebellion without a reason eventually just sort of goes....poof!

Continued:       1       2