The 15 best Jack Black movies and TV shows, ranked
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
When considering Jack Black's career in film and television, the word "game" immediately comes to mind. And not game as in the digital inspirations for recent hits The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Jumanji: The Next Level, or the team sport that gave his long-running folk metal act, Tenacious D, its name. We're talking game as in ready, willing, and enthusiastic: Whether he's voicing a Kung Fu Panda, leading the School of Rock, or playing jovial host to The Mandalorian, Black can be counted on to give his high-kicking, eyebrow-waggling all.
Black has repeatedly demonstrated his flexibility, both physically and in terms of project selection, across his 30-plus years on screen. But if there's one reliable barometer for the absolute best of Black, it may be this: Does he get to sing? Read on to see how many of the following 15 movies and TV shows fit that bill.
15. <i>The Super Mario Bros. Movie</i> (2023)
Some questionable decisions were made along Mario and Luigi's path back to the big screen. But Black's casting as the Nintendo plumbers' eternal nemesis, Bowser, was not one of them. The actor's burly voice is the ideal fit for the King of the Koopas, with just the right capacity for the misplaced romantic longing that drives his ploy to marry Princess Peach — or destroy the Mushroom Kingdom trying.
EW's Christian Holub agreed: "Black's performance is the standout of this voice cast (which makes sense given his years of experience in the Kung Fu Panda franchise), and Bowser's many parody songs expressing his love for Peach make great use of the Tenacious D vocalist's unique skills." This rare villainous turn for Black allows the actor to explore the sinister side of his signature theatrics, embodying a larger-than-extra-life threat that gives stakes to the film's direct-from-the-games set pieces.
Where to watch The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Amazon Prime Video (to purchase)
14. <i>Mars Attacks!</i> (1996)
Within the interplanetary scope of Mars Attacks!, Black's role is small but crucial. As army grunt Billy Glenn Norris, he's positioned as the foil to humanity's eventual savior, his slacker brother Richie (Lukas Haas). Black also takes part in the opening salvo of the film's war between Earth and Mars, a "cultural misunderstanding" during which Billy Glenn is incinerated — before a live television audience that includes his doting parents — by a Martian ray gun after attempting to defend himself with the American flag.
The sight of Black burning up with Old Glory in his hands is essential to the movie's sense of humor. Tim Burton's bug-eyed extraterrestrials — who were notoriously inspired by a set of grisly trading cards — delight in slaughtering Earth's sacred cows, whether it be symbols of American patriotism, monuments to human ingenuity, or Hollywood's biggest stars. As EW's critic wrote upon the film's release, "Mars Attacks! may be the first sci-fi disaster movie that's also an impish black-comedy prank."
Where to watch Mars Attacks!: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)
13. <i>The House With a Clock in Its Walls</i> (2018)
Based on John Bellairs' 1973 novel of the same name, The House With a Clock in Its Walls sends 10-year-old Lewis Barnavelt (Owen Vaccaro) to quaint New Zebedee, Mich., where the young orphan is taken in by his eccentric uncle Jonathan (Black). After Lewis settles into Jonathan's enchanted, automaton-stuffed mansion, he's thrust into a mystery involving sorcery, necromancy, and a hidden timepiece with the ability to wipe out all of humankind.
A supernatural charmer with a whiff of Amblin Entertainment's rental-store favorites, the family-friendly chills in The House With a Clock in Its Walls hail from an unlikely source: Eli Roth (of Hostel and Cabin Fever fame). Did Black, like his guts-and-gore-inclined director, feel a need to adjust for an all-ages audience? "No," he told EW in 2018. "You want to bring the spicy mustard." And that he does, delivering a turn that goes toe-to-toe with no less an acting powerhouse than Cate Blanchett. "Black, no surprise, steals the show," wrote EW's critic, "manically hamming it up like Harry Houdini on laughing gas."
Where to watch The House With a Clock in Its Walls: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)
12. <i>Heat Vision and Jack</i> (1999)
"Pilots don't come more imaginative than this Ben Stiller-directed parody of such shows as The Six Million Dollar Man and Knight Rider," EW wrote after Fox passed on Heat Vision and Jack, Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab's tongue-in-cheek tribute to a bygone era of fantastical episodic action-adventures. What turned the network off? Could it have been the premise, which involved Black's "renegade astronaut" Jack Austin fleeing from a cutthroat NASA agent (played by Timecop villain Ron Silver) with the aid of his former roommate-turned-talking motorcycle, Heat Vision (voiced by Owen Wilson)? The knowingly chintzy special effects? The preamble in which Stiller teases Fox about canceling his eponymous sketch show before it went on to win an Emmy?
Surely it wasn't Black's conviction in the central role, playing a man who gained all the world's knowledge when his space capsule flew too close to the sun — though he loses that enhanced intellect everyday at sunset. Either way, it's one of the biggest blown calls in television history: Fox could've been in business with Black, Wilson, and Harmon before any of them rocketed to all-star status.
Where to watch Heat Vision and Jack: YouTube
11. <i>Mr. Show with Bob and David</i> (1995-1998)
Bob Odenkirk and David Cross' influential HBO series — which Conan O'Brien once described to EW as "one of the most inventive shows I've seen in a long time" — sprang from the L.A. alt-comedy scene of the mid-'90s and drew much of its on- and offscreen talent from that creative hotbed. Exhibit A: Black, who although not a full-time participant in Mr. Show with Bob and David's interlocking sketches, still factored heavily into two of its shining moments.
Naturally, they're both musical numbers. In season 1's "The Joke: The Musical," Black shimmies, twirls, and sashays through an all-singing, all-dancing telling of an old shaggy-dog story about a farmer and a traveling salesman; in season 2's "Jeepers Creepers—Semi Star," he adopts a countercultural slouch in the lead role of an Andrew Lloyd Webber parody that caps off an episode-long runner about '90s slack culture. Each sketch is an ambitious display of Mr. Show's pretzel-logic premises and deep-cut reference points, but they're also great showcases for Black. Even at this stage in his career, he could make good on Jeepers Creepers' promise to his beanie-wearing apostles: "Attention please, if you have the time / I'd like to blow your mind."
Where to watch Mr. Show with Bob and David: Max
10. <i>King Kong</i> (2005)
Fresh off Return of the King's sweep at the 76th Academy Awards, Peter Jackson delivered a King Kong remake with a monumental length: "Three hours is a long run for a primate pic, but the time passes quickly when the entertainment is so full, funny, and unexpectedly moving" said EW's review. But it also slyly comments on the potential folly that awaits any filmmaker who sets out to find a Kong of their own.
For this, Jackson turned to Black in the role of Carl Denham, the cash-strapped director who leads his crew into unchartered territories in search of a big hit only to get much more than he bargained for. "No one beats Black at portraying barely controlled mania," EW's critic wrote, and you can practically see his pupils turn to dollar signs when Carl first lays eyes on Wētā FX's new-and-improved giant ape.
Where to watch King Kong: Peacock and Tubi
9. <i>Kung Fu Panda</i> (2008)
Thanks to the success of Super Mario Bros. and the viral sensation of "Peaches," Black has become an animated icon to a second generation of young moviegoers. The first time around, he played the hero, and an unlikely one at that: Po, the fluffy fighter who rises from fanboy to Dragon Warrior over the course of the first Kung Fu Panda.
The film thrives on Black's star power without needing to show his ever-expressive face. "Black taps a quality that isn't so visible when he pops his eyes with mock ferocity on screen," EW's critic wrote. "He gives Po a slightly abashed suburban-couch-potato sweetness," which contrasts delightfully with the film's squishy, stretchy Looney Tunes treatment of chopsocky filmmaking conventions.
Where to watch Kung Fu Panda: Max
8. <i>Orange County (2002)
In 2002, the teen comedy Orange County made headlines for bridging multiple Hollywood generations. Stars Colin Hanks and Schuyler Fisk and director Jake Kasdan all have ties to Tinsel Town royalty ("son of Tom, daughter of Sissy [Spacek], and son of Lawrence"), not to mention a supporting cast that includes Black, Catherine O'Hara, Lily Tomlin, John Lithgow, and the late Harold Ramis.
Ironically, the film follows aspiring writer Shaun (Colin Hanks) as he attempts to ditch the privileged, braindead inhabitants of his SoCal hometown for a more intelligent, inspiring crowd at Stanford University. It's also notable as an early, music video-inspired stab at social satire by screenwriter Mike White, who now spins it into Emmy gold with The White Lotus. Along for the ride is Black in full-on wildman phase as Shaun's brother, giving this Animal House-on-training-wheels flick its own leaping, howling, frequently pantsless nü-Belushi.
Where to watch Orange County: Amazon Prime Video (to rent)
7. <i>Be Kind Rewind</i> (2008)
There's a "let's put on a show" scrappiness running through Black's body of work, from the pyrotechnics of Tenacious D to his DIY sci-fi goofs with Harmon and the Channel 101 crew. That goes double for this Michel Gondry comedy, in which Black's accidentally magnetized character erases every tape at the VHS store where his friend Mike (Mos Def) works. In an effort to keep the business afloat, they start remaking its inventory, butchering the Ghostbusters theme and assembling a junk-store RoboCop in what they pass off as pricey Swedish imports.
True to the example of an old Judy Garland-Mickey Rooney musical, the whole neighborhood wants to get in on these "sweded" camcorder opuses, reinvigorating a community in the process. As EW's critic said, "Be Kind Rewind has a premise that's so silly-fizzy-catchy, so whimsically out there, so completely and utterly Gondry, you almost can't believe he had the tenacity — or the innocence — to see it through."
Where to watch Be Kind Rewind: Cinemax on Hulu or Amazon Prime Video
6. <i>Margot at the Wedding</i> (2007)
Noah Baumbach movies aren't funny the way Black's movies are usually funny. They're much more verbal, characterized by "an infernally charming skill at leavening discomfort with wit, and a superb ear for the rhythms of chattering-class psycho-destruction," as EW's critic wrote of the overcast family getaway Margot at the Wedding. Yet, Black manages to slip a little chaotic physicality into the dysfunctional reunion between sisters Margot (Nicole Kidman) and Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Black plays Malcolm, the latter's do-nothing, creative-type fiancé who can be seen scrambling down a long set of beach stairs in the wake of an embarrassing disclosure, or curating a destructive visual gag.
Malcolm is the pressure-release valve in Baumbach's scabrous follow-up to 2005's The Squid and the Whale, and one of many points of contention between Margot and Pauline. It's their movie, and their conflict, after all — a lifetime of slights and grievances that Baumbach allows Kidman and Leigh to stew in and act out, rather than over-explaining them in the script.
Where to watch Margot at the Wedding: Pluto TV
5. <i>Tenacious D</i> (1997-2000)
There's a Trojan horse quality to the Tenacious D experience: an arena-sized, scatological spectacle concealed within coffeehouse packaging. The six segments of the band's sporadically-scheduled HBO series — later bundled into three half-hour episodes — follow suit, with flights of fancy matching their self-mythologizing lyrics and contrasting with its members' unassuming appearances. Working with much of the Mr. Show crew — including Tenacious D co-creators and executive producers, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross — Black and Kyle Gass play themselves as starving artists and open-mic regulars who spend their offstage hours getting into kung fu battles, searching for Sasquatch, and stalking their biggest (and likely only) fan.
"Black stage-dives off the screen with brutish magnetism, while Gass serves up deliciously undercooked ham," EW's critic remarked in a review of the DVD retrospective Tenacious D: The Complete Masterworks. "The Greatest Band on Earth" had bigger budgets and screens in its future (via the 2006 feature Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny), but their potential for melting faces and busting guts was never as powerfully realized as it was here.
Where to watch Tenacious D: Max
4. <i>Tropic Thunder</i> (2008)
Tropic Thunder, Ben Stiller's action-comedy about a Vietnam War epic gone horribly wrong, was always controversial. One does not simply cast Robert Downey Jr. as a five-time Oscar winner who undergoes "pigmentation alteration" (i.e. awards-baiting blackface) for a role, or give that character a pivotal, offensive monologue, and expect their film to go un-boycotted. "It's raunchy, outspoken," went EW's review, "and also a smart and agile dissection of art, fame, and the chutzpah of big-budget productions that just so happens to include a naked, bleach-blond Jack Black, as a drug-addled movie star, draped over the back of a water buffalo."
That character, Jeff Portnoy, wants to prove he's capable of doing more than slinging fart jokes in fat suits. In a role and a film that call for comic excess, Black delivers while also proving the value of some well-placed flatulence. He still surprises and amuses years later: EW's 10th-anniversary retrospective applauded Black's Tropic Thunder performance for "how fully committed and semi-psychopathic" it is.
Where to watch Tropic Thunder: Pluto TV
3. <i>The Holiday</i> (2006)
The Holiday is technically the story of a transatlantic house swap between two newly single women (Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet) seeking a year-end change of scenery. But it's also a two-hour-plus, Nancy Meyers-directed argument on behalf of Jack Black, Romantic Lead. As film composer Miles, Black makes a quippy, supportive match for Winslet's newspaper columnist Iris, the kind who can gallantly swab a piece of Santa Ana wind-blown debris from her eyelash and also make her laugh with a movie-score serenade in the aisles of a Blockbuster Video.
It's an against-type performance that won over even skeptical critics, with EW's mixed review of The Holiday praising Black for "dialing down his mad energy to reveal the sweetness beneath." While the film's reputation as a comfort-watch perennial has grown, its assessments have sounded more like this one from EW's ranking of holiday rom-coms (where The Holiday came in at No. 5): "The cast is so wonderfully appealing — especially the ever-winsome Winslet — and the self-conscious dialogue pops enough that, despite being shamelessly sentimental and rather obvious, this is a Holiday to take again and again."
Where to watch The Holiday: YouTube
2. <i>High Fidelity</i> (2000)
High Fidelity is not an aspirational piece of media, and the pop-music-damaged lives of record-store clerks Rob (John Cusack), Dick (Todd Louiso), and Barry (Black) are not meant to be emulated by their sad-sack vinyl-hoarding counterparts on the other side of the screen. We should know this because Black does such a stellar job of making Barry a magnetic, hilarious character who would be positively torturous to deal with in real life.
"I knew that Jack [Black] would be my secret weapon," Cusack said in EW's oral history of High Fidelity. In one of the all-time-great scene-stealing breakout performances, Black's doofy dance moves and righteous proclamations about the Jesus and Mary Chain and Evil Dead II manage to pull our attention away from Cusack's Rob, whose inner monologue shapes the majority of the film. The hopeless romantic and "professional appreciator" gets his happy ending, but even that is upstaged by Barry's moment of musical triumph, as Black hitches a ride to movie stardom on the back of a silly/sultry cover of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On."
Where to watch High Fidelity: Hulu
1. <i>School of Rock</i> (2003)
Dewey Finn is the ultimate Jack Black role. He's a big-hearted striver with a unique ability to connect with kids, while his rock 'n' roll fantasies give Black multiple excuses to break into song. And as School of Rock screenwriter and costar Mike White once told EW, the down-on-his-luck guitarist who secretly swipes a substitute-teaching gig from his roommate and forms a new band with his pupils — teaching the kids the virtues of self-confidence and sticking it to The Man along the way — could've been played by Black and only Black. "Had he not wanted to do it, I probably would have thrown the script away."
There's an oddball alchemy to School of Rock, the product White and Dazed and Confused auteur Richard Linklater teaming up to make a studio family comedy in which the child actors are refreshingly unpolished and the emotions are messy and honest. Black's live-wire energy and six-string proselytizing hold it all together — when he says, "One great rock show can change the world," we believe him. "He's an air guitarist of the soul," EW's critic wrote in 2003, "and Black makes his passion wildly infectious."
Where to watch School of Rock: Paramount+
Related content:
