Bandslam (2009)

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.

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.

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