Swing Girls

Suzuki Tomoko, along with ten plus classmates, has been sentenced to spend their summer vacation confined within their school and listen to her dull teacher Ozawa-sensei drone on and on about math equations that she, her classmates, and Ozawa-sensei himself could give a flip about. Therefore she envies the members of the school's brass band who gets to travel with the baseball team. However, on this particular hot summer day the band's bus leaves before the caterer arrives with the band's lunches. Because the caterer has another delivery, Tomoko, along with the other girls in the class decide to deliver the lunches. While on the train they eat one of the lunches and subsequently fall asleep missing their stop. After suffering such setbacks as jumping into rice paddies to avoid an oncoming train and having to wash their socks, the girls finally deliver the lunches to the brass band and their conductor. However, Nakamura Yuta, a boy Tomoko constantly bickers with, does not receive a lunch because his was consumed on the train ride. However, it seems an angel of mercy was looking over Nakamura when the other members of the brass band suffer a major bought of food poisoning.

Nakamura, being the only member of the brass band who is healthy, is given the task to put together another band for a major baseball game. However, only three girls show up to volunteer: two punk rock girls who play guitar and bass respectively and Sekiguchi Kaori, a sweet, nerdy girl who can play the recorder. However, knowing that Tomoko ate one of the lunches, he spotted a grain of cooked rice on her chin at the baseball game, Nakamura orders Tomoko and her summer school classmates to join the brass band. However, there number only totals sixteen, which is too small a number for a brass band. Yet, after a few events, Nakamura decides instead to start Big Swing Band.

Instead of playing music at first, Nakamura makes the girls exercise to build up their strength and lung capacity for a long performance. The girls eventually begin to enjoy playing their instruments, but right before the big game the brass bands members regain their strength and perform instead of the girls. However, seeds of love for music have been planted in the hearts of the saxophonist Tomoko, the trumpeter Saito Yoshie, the trombonist Sekiguchi, and the drummer Tanaka Naomi and while the other girls quit in order to hang out with some boys, this little group, with Nakamura in tow, sets forth to start their own jazz band.

Before actually watching this film, my only knowledge concerning it was that it was directed by the director of Waterboys, but having yet to watch that film this left me with little information for what to expect. However, I received the experience of watching a very enjoyable film that was without violence, unless you count snowball fights and Naomi's butt cracking the head of a wild boar when the girls go matsutake hunting, without angst, without hormonal frustration, etc. The young actresses have a wonderful chemistry and seem like actual friends instead of actresses. Also, the personalities of Tomoko, Nakamura, Yoshie, Sekiguchi, and Naomi are very well fleshed out and each one of them has their own personal quirks: Yoshie's falls for every cute boy she sees, the mild Sekiguchi excels at whatever she does but is ignored by those around her, and the deadpan Naomi has a wonderful dry sense of humor. Combine all of this with a truly outstanding performance at the end of the film, the girls later on went to perform in New York and Los Angeles, make for a very nice film watching experience.

When a high school brass band (for the school's baseball team), gets food poisoning, the only healthy member of the band (he wasn't able to eat the spoiled food that day) decides to call some indolent girls from the school (who inadvertently caused the food poisoning) to replace the band. Initially, of course, they are a disaster. But just when they start to get better, the original band returns. What's to do, then? What about forming a jazz-style band? Following the structure of his previous film, Water Boys (inept students finally prevail against all odds), Yaguchi made probably his best film so far. It's hilarious, full of great gags. All the actors are good, but the geeky girl named Sekiguchi steal the movie in my opinion.

This is the best japanase comedy i ve ever watched! without a doubt u will fall in love with this Japanese school jazz band!

prepare to enjoy an extraordinary movie! you will laugh a lot!

it is important to highlight that even when you are gonna have fun, you will have the opportunity to learn at the same time about the social problems that the jap. public high school students have to face in modern japan. (family disintegration, school dropouts, the high consumption of brands - cartier, armani,etc- among jap. adolescents, mediocre professors, etc)

if we become extremely critical this movie will get 8/10 or 9/10 on the worst scenario. but because i enjoyed it so much and all of my friends loved it too, so we think this movie deserve 10/10!

I got to see this as it was released in Japan on DVD and it does have English subtitles. 'Swing Girls' has got to be the funniest and most honest 'feel-good' flick I have seen a very long time. Having lived in Japan for a number of years and having two Japanese daughters (one playing in a junior high school orchestra), I feel I'm qualified to at least say that the 'silly Japanese school girl' is portrayed in the best possible light. So if there are silly situations, it is only because they are a bunch of silly girls that have to come clean in a serious situation, i.e. high school competition. Other than not meeting any of Uncle Waldo's criteria for a five-star movie, I have no idea why this movie is not already distributed in USA. And that is a shame.

The characters of Swing Girls are low motivated female high school students taking summer classes. They decide to start playing musical instruments and aim at taking part in a high school band competition. Their performance at the end of the movie is cheered wildly by the audience of actors and by us, the film viewers.

The director of this film is Fumihareu Yaguchi, known most widely for his work on Water Boys, a film about a male high school synchronized swimming team. There are some points in common between these films: the characters are under-motivated teenagers; friendship plays an important role; and the characters learn to achieve a difficult goal.

There are two good points and one weak point to Swing Girls. Overall the casting was excellent. The actresses succeed in portraying youth, seriousness, and pleasure and you can feel the strong tie of friendship between them. The music played in this film is traditional and familiar to many, such as Sing Sing Sing, which we often hear on TV in Japan. But one thing that seems to have been omitted are the scenes of the hard practice to the road to progress. The girls improve too suddenly.