Undergraduate life at strait-laced St. Lucia’s College doesn’t bear much resemblance to the crass debauchery and zany hi-jinks of R-rated sex comedies, but when Steve Jenkins and his friends decide to start a Ramones cover band, they set out to change all that – with results that are mixed at best. The quartet embarks on a shambling adventure filled with barroom antics and dorm room dalliances, keg parties and awkward romantic entanglements. They even manage to play a show or two.

Rock ‘N’ Roll College chronicles the tumultuous rise and fall of the Ramones II, a group beset by internal disputes, a bitter rivalry with another campus band, abstinent groupies, Steve’s crippling (or at least slightly annoying) Pixie Stix addiction and a drummer obsessed with an oddly immersive sword-and-sorcery computer game. Through gigs at a student hangout, a Christmas house party and a hostile blue-collar bar, they struggle to stay together even as they look forward to an eventual showdown with their archenemies at the annual battle of the bands. Along the way, the four rockers pursue the mystery of girls, fight with each other and generally try to figure out who they are.

Evoking at once the heady excitement and painful self-consciousness of young men forging their identities at an institution of higher learning, this hilarious yet heartfelt tale is a comic romp shot through with glimmers of profundity. Both exhilaration and heartache are depicted with sharp insight and sardonic wit. This is a story about early twenties angst, the fraught bonds of male friendship, courtship rituals at a sometimes oppressively secluded private school and, above all, the transformative power of rock ‘n’ roll.