Jack Black’s favourite Jack Black film: “Definitely the movie I’m most proud of”
If aliens ever landed on Earth, it would be best for all of us if Jack Black was the first human they encountered. Full of infectious charm, disarming even through the mediation of a screen, and bursting with comic and musical talent, he would be a pretty decent ambassador, even if he would set expectations a little too high.
Throughout his career, Black has managed to be one of the most in-demand comic actors in the business while maintaining a rabid fandom for his satirical rock band, Tenacious D. Any fan of the performer has plenty of movies to choose from if they were forced to name their favourite. 2003’s School of Rock is the most obvious. It’s one of the few examples of a movie in which a comedian is given free rein to dominate every scene without ever devolving into an emotionless, self-indulgent comedy routine.
There are many others that you could choose as well. High Fidelity deserves a mention, even if he isn’t a main character. Kung Fu Panda has become a childhood classic, and The Holiday gave him the opportunity to prove he could be just as dreamy as Jude Law in a romantic comedy.
When breaking down his best performances in an interview with GQ, Black praised many of his movies. He said that he had “the time of [his] life” playing his breakthrough role in High Fidelity and called Tropic Thunder “groundbreaking” and “funny as hell”.
Out of all his films, however, Black reserved his most glowing praise for School of Rock. He said that writer Mike White had wanted to write a script for him following the actor’s scene-stealing work in Orange County and that he’d had very little input on the first draft. Black described the earliest iteration of the screenplay as “dynamite” and described the synergy that developed between him, director Richard Linklater, and the child actors playing his students.
“Richard is a theatre guy at his core,” he said. “That’s his roots, and me too, so I was super comfortable with… workshopping scenes with the kids and finding new beats.” As a case in point, the famous scene where Black, playing a substitute teacher, assigns the kids in his class various musical instruments and workshops a song on the fly with them was created during their rehearsals and added into the script.
“It’s definitely the movie I’m most proud of,” he said. “It’s the one that really…it felt like all the planets aligned.”
Many of his fans would agree. School of Rock is a high watermark of comedic vehicles for a larger-than-life comedian. In fact, Robin Williams is probably the only other performer who was able to channel his pure comedic talent into movies that were emotionally resonant, fully realised stories. Black has often been used as a comic relief in big-budget movies of varying degrees of quality, whether it’s the rebooted Jumanji franchise or the Goosebumps franchise.
On the other hand, when he’s been given an entire movie to star in, his performances can veer into the Jim Carrey realm of exhaustingly manic. School of Rock, as the actor himself acknowledged, is the film where it all came together, the perfect vehicle for a performer who can do it all, given the right circumstances.
