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.

I believe it was the great Leslie Nielsen who first puked into a tuba in Naked Gun 33 1/3. Call me juvenile, but that gag ALWAYS gets me.

In "Swing Girls" the gags are not always original, but maybe that's what makes this such a hilarious film. Everything is so delightfully predictable that you needn't waste time trying to unravel it. Instead you just sit back and enjoy the presentation.

The humour is largely visual, but it's not corny or slapstick. It's hard to describe--perhaps I'd categorize it with Monty Python's deadpan style: subtle and classy while not being afraid to make fun of itself. And this movie definitely makes fun of itself, like in the scene where the kids are running from a ferocious wild boar which is quite plainly a stuffed prop. Juxtapose the bizarrely inappropriate Louis Armstrong tune "What a Wonderful World" on top, and you have yourself 3 solid minutes of asphyxiating laughter.

Now comedy aside, it's important that you know something about the music. These kids are actually playing their own instruments. The fingering and breathing technique is authentic, right down to the last flubbed note. I think this is worthy of mention because it adds a certain authenticity to the film, much like in SPINAL TAP. Not only are they acting, they're really playing too.

Let me finish by saying that YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIKE SWING MUSIC to enjoy this film. Me, I'm a fan of death metal. But by the end of this film (and for some time thereafter) I sure as heck found myself whistling "Take the 'A' Train". Can't get the bloody tune out of my head now.

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.

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!

what a fun! I was totally surprised by this film; at first i had the prejudice that the whole thing could turn out like a hysterical teenage comedy but it didn't, luckily.

The light hearted feeling in this film was so comfortable. It is just like as someone already wrote in the comments. This film really does complement the, in movies or animes often seen, generalized or sometimes sexist image of Japanese school girls. The soundtrack, beside the jazz music, was also excellent, though it was the common "japanese-drama" background-music (accoustic guitar and stuff). The Jazz music covers solely standards and wasn't very artistically played but it was, combined with this movie, awesome! The acting was also very nice, however there were some awkward moments when the acting felt a little bit exaggerated. But that's fine with me, considering that many of the cast debuted with this film.

This could have been a reason to give this film a 8/10 but the funky finale made a 9/10 out of it. ;)