Critic Reviews

Had Cameron Crowe and the late John Hughes collaborated on a movie populated by Disney Channel superstars, the result might have looked and sounded a lot like Todd Graff's Bandslam. And that's meant as a compliment.

High school musicals have their scrappiest number in Bandslam, an awkward, earnest, almost irresistible indie.

the script's earnest intelligence and the actors' charm (Connell, Hudgens and Kudrow are especially fun to watch) make this film an entertaining ode to teenage joie de vivre.

Misfit teens in the process of forming a high school band learn life lessons and raise their goblets of rock. But there's enough of a strong filmmaking backbeat in Bandslam to carry the movie's light tune.

This isn’t a breakthrough movie, but for what it is, it’s charming, and not any more innocuous than it has to be.

Bandslam is “Camp’’ with rock ’n’ roll instead of show tunes, but its roots go back to the Busby Berkeley backstagers and Mickey-and-Judy let’s-put-on-a-show musicals of the 1930s.

The late John Hughes would have liked Bandslam, an upbeat high school musical that plays like a garage-band cover of "The Breakfast Club."

Here’s the surprise: Bandslam may come from synthetic materials, but the characters are a little more complicated than usual.

Todd Graff's film is written with a desperate cleverness that clamors for attention over the brainless against-the-odds music-competition plot.

Best of all is newcomer Connell, the kind of charismatic kid who would have been cast in "Freaks and Geeks" ten years ago.