Like The Ramones' music, Rock 'N' Roll High School is much less punk in spirit than reactionary mayhem, throwing back to shit like The Blackboard Jungle and Beach Blanket Bingo more than, say, Guy Fawkes (the ultimate punk). It's a lowbrow comedy on the level of H.O.T.S. or Revenge of the Nerds, but basks in hipness thanks to Joey Ramone & Co.'s participation; they raise it to something rather otherworldly. The sight of The Ramones serenading a seminude P.J. Soles in her bedroom is irrepressibly cool, and you can't go wrong with visceral live numbers from the band, playing a concert before an audience containing, among others, a guy in a giant mouse costume and an American Indian (introduced as – rimshot, please – a "scalper." The proceedings are mostly inoffensive, "Happy Days"-style shit until the students take control of the school and ultimately blow it up. This particular teenage fantasy could never be used in a current comedy for fear of people going on about Columbine and all that. Here, the nihilism erupts almost like Do The Right Thing, if that film had been produced by Roger Corman. A few too many musical numbers (and I say that as someone who loves The Ramones) bog things down, stretching what was probably a 45-minute film into feature length. But whatever it is, they really don't make 'em anymore like Rock 'N' Roll High School. The only way it could be better, possibly, would be had it been made in 1984 with Twisted Sister.
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