REVIEW: Bandslam

My policy of giving everything a chance certainly bites me in the ass sometimes. And needless to say this was one of those times. This high school musical for indie kids, was everything it was headlined to be. It even retained a cast member from that particular juggernaut, whose success was essentially everyone gorging on their own sense of ironies because I refuse to be so cynical to believe people actually thought it was good. Anyways, Vanessa Hudgens the leading of the most successful trilogy the tween generation has ever had. Turns up here, in a smaller role then advertised. She is OK to be fair, and she can certainly sing. Not as noticeably terrible is I expected but hardly Kate Winslet either. But her presence her is more a marketing ploy then anything, a trick to bring those naive little HSM fans wandering in to the movie. The movie itself is more a rerun of School of Rock but with Jack Black replaced with a self-superior teenage social outcast Gaelen Connell. He goes through the motions of teaching the good indie word to the numb skulls until they eventually play in a battle of the bands like 'Bandslam'. It pretty much follows the template word for word. But it fails to realize the thing that made that movie in anyway good was Black himself, and Connell does not now and will never cut that kind of presence. Lisa Kudrow turns up for a while to show people she still exists and nothing really else merits mentioning. If your a kid under 14 either emo or indie orienatated but not too much, you may get something out of this. But for everyone else, just don't/

Rating: 4/10