Bandslam is better than it has any right to be. After all, its premise is strictly out of the Disney playbook: Geeky teen loner becomes the manager of a band, and finds himself torn between two girls, the band’s (gorgeous) rebellious lead singer and the (equally gorgeous) bookish outsider he’s partnered with in his human studies class.

And yet . . . I sensed something was up with Bandslam right out of the gate, when our hero Will (Gaelen Connell) wrote a letter to David Bowie. (Had his letter been to Nickelback, I would've known I was in for a long night.) Turns out, Will has been writing letters to Bowie for a while now, undeterred by the fact that Bowie never writes back.

My second clue that Bandslam had a few tricks up its sleeve was when I saw that Lisa Kudrow was cast as Will’s mother. You simply don’t hire an actress as wonderfully offbeat and vivid as Kudrow unless you’ve got a good reason. And Kudrow gets to do some fine work as the protective mother—yes, she smothers a bit, but we eventually find out it’s with good reason.

Vanessa Hudgens, she of High School Musical (and inappropriate photos) fame, plays the weirdo shy girl Sa5m (“the 5 is silent,” she says—amusingly), who has a hard time expressing happiness. Hudgens would be a lot more convincing if she didn’t still have her perfect, shiny Disney hair—she actually looks more like a popular girl than the actress who plays the popular girl (Aly Michalka). As for Michalka, her character’s motives for befriending Will are suspect—what’s a teen queen like her doing with a dweeb like him?—but she eventually wins over both Will and audience with her freewheeling charm. Are we all being deceived?

Of course, everyone ends up at the big rock talent show, where Will’s underdog band will have to overcome yet another obstacle en route to (unlikely) glory.

Look, it’s not Truffaut, folks, but everytime you think Bandslam is going to settle for teen flick cliches, it does something surprisingly interesting or quirky. And the casting of newcomer Connell is inspired—he’s a shaggy-haired Shia LeBeouf type who’s believable as the brainy music geek who knows that he simply has to endure the torture of high school for a little bit longer. I was so right there with ya, buddy.