Swing Kids (1993)

Simply A Masterpiece

Redundant and unnecessary.

Boring

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

DO NOT BOTHER! Horrible acting and average dancing. Forget it I just couldn't get into it when Germany was starving like my home country England. Rotten as I said besides your toenails need clipping don't waste the 90 minutes or so of your life! Furthermore, the story-line was thin and all over the place and the acting did not make me like any of the characters - The acting was over the top and it felt like Happy Days or the movie Greese with swastikas! Sad as the director Thomas Carter, tried but the cast choice was very strange. Willie is there and as Peter is driven away by the police he loudly screams "Swing Heil!" over and over again, which is very silly and pathetic. Evey - she was the worst actor and very wooden. SAY NO!

I've read some of the reviews and feel I need to give a history lesson to some of them. This was 1938-1939. The Nazis hadn't gone berzerk with the killing of Jews and Gypsys etc. They may have been doing it in secret, but it wasn't common knowledge. That being said, the attempts to "cleanse" their society was indeed in full swing. *pardon the pun. They wanted nothing to do with outside influence, the training of the next generation was Hitler's plan. The HJ were to be the next generation of leaders, policemen, and general authority figures.Youth will rebel, it seems they always do to some degree. That's what these kids were doing. The movie is a very small view of what was going on. It's not the big picture.... it's basically Peter's struggle with who he is, who his father was, and his immediate environment. You can't really say the movie isn't accurate, because none of you is Peter.I love the movie. I love the music and the heart Peter puts into it. He loves the music... as he loved his father. And the Nazis tried to take both of them.

Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale and Frank Whaley give stature to the "Swing Kids", a movement of German teenagers who rebelled against the Nazi-ideology by playing an dancing to swing music in clubs( forbidden for being 'black and Jewish music'). The threesome comes from substantially different standing and differ as night and day in personality as well. Bale brings to life another extrovert character(Thomas), dancing tightrope on that slim line between self-confidence and arrogance. Whaley's character (Arvid) is intelligent and musically gifted, yet bruises like a peach, his emotional fragility a result of a crippled leg which condemns the artist from ever dancing to the music he loves and plays (the tragedy of the deaf composer and the blind painter all over again). These two characters occupy two ends the scale, and are both dangerously unstable, unlike our third and main 'kid': Robert Sean Leanord's character (Peter), an ambitious and idealistic youngster, a type commonly referred to as a 'golden boy', the whole world awaiting to be conquered by him. Yet he also has an Achilles' Heel: his father's death early in his childhood. As often the bond between the gang seems stronger than it is, everyone gets along great when there isn't a care in the world, theirs only consists of smoking cigarettes, guzzling drinks and dancing with girls in hip clubs. When they try to lift a radio in another one of their mischievous antics, Peter gets captured and his hand is forced into joining the 'Hitler Jugend', Thomas happily tags along stating 'we can have the best of both worlds, HJ by day, Swing Kids by night'. Arvid, the most insightful of the gang, warns them of the dangers of getting brainwashed by Hitler's foul propaganda but it could not be helped, soon Thomas takes a turn for the worse and tension in the once so close-knit group mounts. Playful remarks regarding Arvid's handicap turn into insults of impurity, Thomas is so caught up in the world of cool HJ gadgets and perks that he neglects to notice he's being manipulated.The thriller elements don't form the core of the movie, they're useful as a means to an end, to keep the viewer focused so he doesn't miss a second of the interesting characters, the interactions and dialog are really what matters the most. The lack of attention for politics makes 'Swing Kids' special in the war-drama genre. It's a bold yet smart choice. This approach (and the soothing swing club intervals) made it easier to watch than most in the genre, which I think keeps the movie from alienating young audiences. It's pleasant to watch the history of pre-war Germany through the eyes of rebellious young citizens and subsequently (as a young man) being able to identify more with and relate to the characters. The government in place at that time was accepted, just like we accept the supreme command now, it's highly plausible kids could see more light in standing up for a sort of symbolic value namely 'Swing Music' (rather than forming political movements), which of course is connected with freedom of arts...and so forth with freedom of expression. 'Swing Kids', though certainly engrossing and accomplished, is fairly uneven and at times loses the audience's attention with gratuitous melodramatic scenes. Near the end the focus strays from intelligent dialog and interactions towards silent melodrama. Paired with Robert Sean Leonard's underwhelming performance (yet again), it's a small blemish on an otherwise highly recommendable film.

I do love swing music and love the music and artists from the era. So did my parents who were contemporary with it. But they had the good fortune to love it in the USA. It was a dangerous thing to like Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington and most of all Arthur Shawronsky who the authorities did know was Artie Shaw. But these squares were the Gestapo and Swing Kids is about the youth who loved American swing music at considerable cost.Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale, Frank Whaley are three friends who are into American swing at a time in their country when such "jungle" music was Verboten. Swing Kids is the story about how all three were dealing with the growing strangulation of culture. One of the opening scenes takes place at a forbidden swing club where the kids are cutting a rug to Benny Goodman when word comes the authorities are near. Without a beat the band turns into a typical German Oompah band, the kind of music Herr Schicklgruber deemed acceptable to German youth.Which was being swallowed up by the Hitler Youth and the social pressures to join are enormous. Something that we in this country cannot fathom. I'm not a big fan of the current Pope, but about the only thing I'll give Benedict XVI a pass on was joining the Hitler Youth. At a certain point the wiggle room got less and less. Barbara Hershey as Leonard's mother gives a good performance as a woman keeping company with a Gestapo official for a little more comfort. Her husband and Leonard and David Tom's father had been arrested by the Gestapo a few years back and died as a result of their custody. The Gestapo official is played by an unbilled Kenneth Branagh who took no billing for his part deliberately.Swing Kids has a timely lesson for today if some in federal authority will care to learn it. The fundamentalist Moslems just as the Nazis hate our decadent culture. The answer is keep importing it into places like Iran by the cargo ship load. Don't bomb them to death, just send them our music and films.By the way our own fundamentalist Christians hated that music as they hate the music of today. Something about authoritarianism of whatever stripe just hates contemporary culture, whatever it is at the time.Swing Kids is a valuable lesson about freedom of expression wrapped up in a good entertaining package.