Rock 'N' Roll High School (DVD)

I got given this dvd for Christmas around 6 years ago. I recently found it in my dvd collection so I thought I would watch it again.

Rock’n’Roll High School is a comedy/musical and is set in 1980 in a school in America. The main story is based around one of the pupils, Riff Randell. She is a very big rock’n’roll fan, especially music by The Ramones. Riff tries to bring music to the school and pupils by taking over the schools speaker ...
...changing the music tapes in her gym class.

The new head teacher of the school is convinced that rock’n’roll music is bad for the pupils and that it rots their brains. She has conducted her own experiments on a mouse which we see exploding due to the ‘rockability’ of The Ramones music. I found the performance of the head teacher really annoying, she was made to be very militant and strict over such a silly thing.

Riff Randall ... more

I got given this dvd for Christmas around 6 years ago. I recently found it in my dvd collection so I thought I would watch it again.

Rock’n’Roll High School is a comedy/musical and is set in 1980 in a school in America. The main story is based around one of the pupils, Riff Randell. She is a very big rock’n’roll fan, especially music by The Ramones. Riff tries to bring music to the school and pupils by taking over the schools speaker system and playing Ramones music through it, and also by changing the music tapes in her gym class.

The new head teacher of the school is convinced that rock’n’roll music is bad for the pupils and that it rots their brains. She has conducted her own experiments on a mouse which we see exploding due to the ‘rockability’ of The Ramones music. I found the performance of the head teacher really annoying, she was made to be very militant and strict over such a silly thing.

Riff Randall has written some songs for The Ramones. One of these songs is called ‘Rock’n’Roll High School’ which she performs in gym class to her friends while her teacher is out of the room.

Riff bunks off school for three days in order to queue to get Ramones tickets. Every day her friend brings an excuse letter to the head teacher as to why she is not there, unfortunately the newspaper has written an article about the first person to buy the tickets.. Riff. The head teacher reads the article and confiscates Riffs tickers. Will she ever get to go to the concert and give the Ramones the songs she has written for them?

The film has performances in it from The Ramones. They both act and perform their music in the film. This means that the film is quite appealing for fans of The Ramones (especially teenage ones), but maybe not so much for peope who aren’t fans as I found the film to be quite cheesy and a little bit too silly for me.

The story line isn’t too much to speak of, it is basically about a girl who is The Ramones number one fan who wants to meet them and write songs for the band, personally I found it to be a little bit boring.

I have to say though, some of the outfits in the film are great! They are so 80s; tight lycra leotards in amazingly bright colours, waistcoats, shell suits and large glasses which I think look quite cool.

All in all it is an ok film, but not one I will watch regularly and I was actually thinking about putting it to the second hand shop as I have only watched it twice since I got it. It was quite a novel film to watch first time round since I was quite a fan of The Ramones but my musical tastes have changed since then so this film doesn’t really appeal to me anymore, especially since it is quite cheesy and over the top. If you do want to buy it it is available from Amazon for £3.98, which seems quite cheap to me!

The film has a 15 certificate. There is no swearing in the film but there is mild sexual references and at a couple of parts in the film Riff does smoke a joint, so that may be why.

The film has a run time of 93 minutes, which I found to be an ok length and just about held my attention.

There are also some extras included on the disk. These are:

• Radio Spots – radio commercials for the film
• Interview – an interview with the director
• Live with The Ramones - live performances from The Ramones that were used in the final film.
• Trailer – the original trailer for the film
• Audio Commentary – you can choose to turn the audio commentary on whilst watching the film

 

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