Clearly, Richard Linklater didn’t get the memo.

You know the memo I’m talking about. It’s the memo that gets sent to every big studio director in this country: the memo that dictates that every protagonist must be Albert Schweitzer, every villain Adolf Hitler, and every child a wooden stereotype.

It’s the memo that decrees that every budget must be big, every story epic and every man and woman romantically involved. It’s the memo that states that every loser must be redeemed, every laugh must be forced and every inspirational storyline as flat and syrupy-sweet as week-old soda. Clearly, Richard Linklater didn’t get the memo.

Thank God for that.

At a time when wide-release comedies may have hit their lowest point ever (Does anyone actually like Ashton Kutcher? I mean, really?), independent film superstar Linklater (Slacker, Waking Life) has released a big-budget revelation for Paramount Pictures in The School of Rock.

It is by turns warm, inspiring and funny, and manages to be all of these things without once resorting to the gross-out jokes that have seemingly become our national currency.

The story centers on Dewey Finn (Jack Black), who has just been ousted from his band because of his embarrassing on-stage antics and owes his roommate (Mike White) a lot of money. Dewey can’t find a job of his own, so he steals his roommate’s job as a substitute teacher at a prestigious elementary school. When he hears the kids practicing their instruments next door, he decides to kill two birds with one stone.

He recruits the students into his new band, while at the same time teaching them the lessons that rock and roll has to offer. In the process, Dewey clashes with the stuffy headmistress (Joan Cusack) and his roommate’s girlfriend (Sarah Silverman), and both teacher and students learn something about themselves and about life. The movie culminates with a predictable performance against Dewey’s former bandmates at a high stakes battle of the bands.

The most remarkable thing about the plot is how utterly generic it is. As one of my friends put it: “It’s like Sister Act, only it has kids instead of nuns, and it doesn’t suck.” The story outlined above could, with minor adjustments, be the story outline for dozens of films put out in the last two years.

All of which makes it that much more surprising that this is a very, very good movie.

Linklater’s direction is half of the story. The same attributes that made Dazed and Confused such a success are in effect here. Linklater’s style still flows almost effortlessly from scene to scene, turning a ridiculous premise into an eminently watchable film.

Linklater still displays an unwillingness to marginalize any of his characters, developing the school’s headmistress from a one-dimensional villain to a complete and somewhat tragic person who, as she says at one point, “can remember a time when she was fun.”

Most importantly, Linklater still shows the same warmth toward his characters that marks all of his independent productions. Dewey’s endless overblown speeches about the transformative powers of rock and roll would have been milked for laughs at his expense under another director. Instead, Linklater allows us to bask in Dewey’s sincerity, and to admire him for his conviction.

Linklater can only be given part of the credit for this movie, however. As good as his direction is, this film is still dependant on the charisma and energy of Jack Black. From the first moment of this film, Black exudes a comic presence I haven’t seen from him, or from anybody for that matter, since his breakout performance in High Fidelity.

Black struts, shrieks, and chews the scenery, all in the hopes of getting a laugh. He’s all over the place, but he never gets annoying or unbelievable because we sense that his enthusiasm is grounded in compassion for his students.

The School of Rock is not perfect—Sarah Silverman, one of the funniest women around, is given far too little to do in a standard whiny girlfriend role, and Mike White practically wrote himself out of his own script—but it’s close enough for me. Maybe if I recommend it highly enough, Paramount will scrap The Memo once and for all.