HEY EVERYBODY! Shout out! It's High School Musicalbreakout week. While Ashley Tisdale mugs her way through the ropey Aliens in the Attic, Vanessa Hudgens has landed on her feet in this surprisingly palatable high-school flick from the director of the perky 2003 musical Camp.

The poster – all hypoglycaemic lettering and grinning adolescents – suggests that we are heading back to HSMterritory but, cut to plastic indie rock and featuring surlier teenagers, Bandslamis much closer to something like Richard Linklater's School of Rock. Parents of a certain age and inclination should be aware that the scene in which two characters break into an abandoned CBGB's may have them blubbing nostalgically into their Enormo-Cola.

Punctuated by the hero's unanswered e-mails to David Bowie (we've all been there), Bandslamfollows young Will Burton (Gaelan Connell), a music fanatic, as he tries to settle into a new school in New Jersey. He is immediately charmed by a slope-shouldered intellectual (Hudgens) and surprised to discover that Charlotte (Aly Michalka), the school's untouchably glamorous blonde, seems prepared to give him the time of day.

Will is, sadly, still bullied by moronic jocks, but finds relief by managing a band named – hold on to your bin lids, Beckett fans – I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On. The group, featuring Charlotte as lead singer, hope to triumph at an upcoming Battle of the Bands competition.

Bandslamfeatures such a refreshingly unglamorous portrayal of teenage life and showcases such grounded performances from Connell and Hudgens that it proves easy to forgive its unsure sense for the dynamics of alt.rock. Okay, the band's name does reference a high-brow author and the manager is obsessed with Bowie, The Velvet Underground and Talking Heads. But their first original song sounds like something by Carly Simon.

They also have a very strange sense of what’s hip.

“Yeah, my dad played keyboards with The Who,” Will says. “Oh I know it sounds cool.” No, it doesn’t!