Sam Anderson, writing in Slate, has a bone to pick with Jack Black. Anderson believes that Black has squandered his talent by taking up roles in movies such as Shallow Hal, The Holiday and even School of Rock.

The core of Black’s talent is his inspired parody of inspiration. Each of his characters tries (but fails) to live by Walter Pater’s classic dictum: “To burn always with this hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” He whips violently between extremes—depression, ecstasy, rage—and funnels every moment toward an exaggerated hyper-moment. His emotional spectrum runs roughly from toddler to adolescent, with blind, self-glorifying, Dionysian raptures followed immediately by apocalyptic tantrums—listen, for instance, to the classic Tenacious D skit “Inward Singing,” in which he completes the entire cycle in two minutes. Although Black’s critics tend to dismiss him as the kind of guy he often portrays—loud, boorish, dumb—his art actually runs much deeper. His best work is profoundly and purposefully stupid: He’s examining what it means to be that kind of guy, swept away by super-sized joy.

via growabrain