It is a sweltering and hot suumer day in a northern Japanese town. Tomoko Suzuki barely maintains consciousness in her make-up mathematics summer course. She envies her school's brass band as they load up into a bus to go play for the school's baseball team. A catering truck carrying the band's lunches comes to the school only minutes after the band has left for the stadium. Tomoko hatches a plan to miss mathematics and deliver the lunches to the band. Of course, this is all for the good of the band and the team. What could Tomoko and the rest of the girls in the course get from such a selfless act, other than a day off school? They're about to find out that they're in deeper than they could ever wish.
This selfless act of theirs only manages to wipe out all but one of the band members with food poisoning. Let this be a lesson to you all. Don't do anything good for anyone because their food will spoil in the heat and they will get food poisoning. The lone band member left standing, Takuo, is left to pick up the pieces. With only one week before the next baseball game and the brass band hospitalized, Takuo coerces the girls into forming a band to take their place. Not having enough numbers to form a full brass band they have just enough to form a Big Band. Thus Swing Girls are born and the crazy antics continue.
Seeing an opportunity to miss more mathematics classes Tomoko and the girls agree to join the band and even though most of them have never played an instrument before they are soon bitten by the jazz bug. But when the brass band returns fully recovered from their illness the girls are left with no band or gig but a desire to play big band music. Tomoko, Yoshie, Naomi, Sekiguchi and Takuo still want to play. Together with rhythm and bass guitarists with rock roots they struggle to find venues to practice and play when a lone stranger offers advice to a near-blind Sekiguchi after a less than stellar show. It turns out that the stranger is their mathematics teacher, Ozawa, a jazz enthusiast with about as much musical talent as a blind chimp. He may not know jazz but he knows what he likes. And it is this passion that ignites that in the girls and focuses them into frighteningly good musicians in such a short time.
Their big opportunity to perform as a whole comes when the local high school band festival approaches. Never before has a jazz band performed at a venue traditionally played by brass bands. How will the girls do? Will their audition tape be accepted? Will they get to the performing hall on time? You'll just have to watch Swing Girls to find out.
So what makes what sounds like total poodle-fluff work so well? Perhaps when it comes down to it everyone involved realized that it was a total fluff of a movie and just went with that. The cast and crew know and understand the material and don't stray from the bounds of it. What is this movie about? A bunch of girls, and a boy, get together and form a band. Alright then, then let's not get caught up in anything else or stray from that. It works marvelously well. While there are hints at other underlying plot lines in the movie, for example, romantic storylines between Takuo and Tomoko, or the teachers Ozawa and Yayoi, they are merely hinted at and then the focus is right back to the band. There all your talent and effort lies. If the goal of the movie was to make you feel good then it is accomplished in spades. The simplicity of the narrative and the precision of the comedic elements deliver on all counts. I will go on record and say that the boar scene in Swing Girls rivals that of one of the biggest Korean box office smashes of last year. My hand is on my Bible.
But then when you think about it isn't that what Swing music is supposed to be about? Having fun? Getting on that dance floor and just going for it? Swing Girls reflects that fun nature and esthetic of Swing music. It's supposed to make you feel good. It's supposed to bring a smile to face. You ain't got that thing if you ain't got that swing. This movie sure has swing baby. And at the end of the movie when the girls get to that music hall [ooh I just gave that away didn't I] and they perform in front of that crowd you can't help but smile and perhaps, if no one else is watching, clap you hands along with the movie. That's the power of Swing.
If there was any sort of comparison that I could make to a western film so you would have a better idea how Swing Girls is executed I would say it would compare favorably to School of Rock. The idea is same in concept, a group of students are formed together by an idealistic band leader and they perform at the big show to the delight of the audience. Except that this film is delivered within the context of Japanese culture and humor. But I would dare say that Swing Girls could be in fact funnier than SoR, pending the viewer and their understanding and/or tolerance of the esthetic and humor of Japanese film in general.
There are some things to note about the performances in the movie. All the music scores in the movie were performed by the actor and actresses themselves. In fact, many of the actresses had never played an instrument before. They took intensive music lessons at Yamaha Music School for several months before the shooting began. And to promote the movie, the actor and the actresses performed live in concerts in Japan and USA. There is also a DVD of those performances as well [see below].
Release dates of this film in Japan and Hong Kong were nearly a year apart. Swing Girls was released in Japan in September 2004 and in Hong Kong in September 2005. The Japanese DVDs were released in March of 2005 prior to a theatrical release in Hong Kong. I reviewed the HK R3 disc which was released last December. Other editions available include a JP R2 standard and special edition [see below].
Swing Girls HK R3 DVD
Swing Girls JP R2 Standard Edition
Swing Girls JP R2 Special Edition
Swing Grils First and Last Concert JP R2 [No English Subtitles]