A Banda do Paraíso

This film gave me probably the most pleasant surprise of any I've ever seen. It was not a big-budget production and its premise, middle-age amateur jazz musicians get an unexpected professional engagement at a Catskills-like resort, seems rather modest. What's not modest is the film's success. This is a little slice-of-life movie that is most entertaining throughout. Director Frank D. Gilroy also wrote the script and it's full of interesting subplots and unexpected twists.

The actors are journeymen who do a solid job. The biggest revelation to me was Cleavon Little. He plays a professional musician who is hired to fill in for an ailing band member. His attitude immediately clashes with the others. While they see it as an opportunity for big fun and a once in a lifetime thing, he sees it as his job and not a particularly interesting one. This leads to conflict but when the group gets in trouble, he steers them through. Little, who died too young, really showed me he was a fine actor with this film.

This movie is a true sleeper, the kind that a film fan always hopes to discover. I recommend it wholeheartedly.

"The Gig" is a tight, funny and poignant little movie about a group of friends that have gathered together on a regular basis to play Dixieland for fun. The group unexpectedly lands a real paying job, in musician's parlance; a "gig".

They travel to upstate NY for a two week gig at a summer resort minus one member, who bows out due to contracting cancer. At the last minute, they hire a professional to take his place. Things get sticky as an over-the-hill Frankie Valli type attempts a comeback at the resort and tries to utilize the group as his band.

The attitude the professional bass player gave the guys rang true. By signing up to play the two-week gig, they were taking bread out of the mouths of someone who needed the job to feed his or her family. While Pop, Rock, Rap, Country and Western, and R&B stars make money off of albums. Jazz musicians have to travel abroad to make a living. Almost nobody gets rich. The guys living their dream also cost others a needed income.

I believe that almost everyone who can play a musical instrument with some proficiency dreams about playing a paying "gig" one time or another, Woody Allen and Kevin Bacon are two popular examples of this amateur-to-professional crossover. I especially recommend this movie to anyone who has ever played music professionally. My mom, who was a musician, LOVED it.

This little film brings back a lot of memories, both fond and foul, of what can and does happen when one is a working musician. The not so pleasant accommodations for the band, the management of the venue jumping up and down telling you what to play, the sheer ecstasy of the applause.............. Far from being farcical it is, in fact, very accurate in the way it depicts musicians, professional and otherwise, who have travelled a great distance to perform a season of gigs at a venue. There are those times when everything goes perfectly, there are those other times when you immediately start to miss your partner and wonder what the hell you are doing this far from home. In the end you have to make the best of it because there is no other way out.

This movie is almost never seen today - the only reason I can enjoy it again and again is from a slightly worn out VHS copy I made when the film was shown on TV in 1991 here in England.

An ensemble cast are obviously enjoying themselves and this is reflected to the viewer. A razor sharp script helps things along, and once you've seen this you will want to watch it over and over again.

Wayne Rogers is the 'star' but everyone contributes to a great film, with a great jazz soundtrack to boot. There are emotional moments during the film, but never to the point of sickly sweet sentimentalism - these are guys on the trip of a lifetime, and they convey that excitement wonderfully.

Highly recommended if you can actually get to see it.

So, a group of middle-age guys who play jazz for a hobby get to live out their dream of playing a professional gig (at a resort hotel), and the dream doesn't turn out like they thought it would.

Doesn't sound like much, but "The Gig" is a movie that sticks with you, because of its understated exploration of the stakes involved in just living a life - failure, hopes, small comforts, friendship, disappointments. The jazz group is the nominal theme, but the film is a character study. Not an academic one - it has the guts (and script) to bleed a little for the characters, and is unconventional in its avoidance of easy tie-ups and crowd-pleasing pay-offs.

An extremely satisfying, heartfelt, well-crafted picture, with performances from Wayne Rogers (TV MASHs 'Trapper John') and Cleavon Little (best known probably as the sheriff in "Blazing Saddles", though he also played a comedy TV doctor in "Temperatures Rising") which suggest they generally didn't get the roles they deserved and were capable of.