After the Water Boys review I was going to do Swing Girls straight away… but procrastination leads to nowhere so you get the review now, only a quick review this time.

Swing Girls was made after Water Boys and that makes sense since Water Boys was such a huge hit so Swing Girls has the plot of Water Boys + girls and instruments - boys… but better that is (imho).

Main cast: Ueno Juri, Yuta Hiraoka
Genre: Feel good comedy
Length: 105 minutes
Released: 2005

Synopsis
A class of useless girls in catch up class end up traveling to deliver lunch to their school brass band at a baseball game, however, they accidentally poison the lunch and the band. Nakamura - Yuto Hiraoka- (a member of the band who didn’t get poisoned) gets together a new band with those girls, some punk rockers and a shy yet bright girl. The movie is about their efforts in creating the jazz band.

My Thoughts
I saw Swing Girls before watching Water Boys (even if it was made after) and I thought that WB would be of the same quality, to me however, Swing Girls was better.

Swing Girls is made with the pretty much same recipe Water Boys was, this time round a new field (of Jazz) is chosen and we have girls instead. So because it’s using same scheme of Water Boys there are a few faults. And YES, plot holes do exist here, many of them. The movie starts off pretty slow actually and the real fun isn’t there until they pick up an instrument which is a good 20-30mins into the movie.

The characters are nothing new, in fact they are probably over cliched and overdone (HEY, like the WB characters) but still quite likable because none of them have any annoying traits. Even though there are many stereotypical characters they all add a little bit of flair and humor into the story. My favourite character was Yuta Hiraoka’s character :3 because his haircut is the coolest thing ever. All the actors portray these over exagerated characters very well actually making it believable (Ueno Juri is great and that glasses chick is too!).

Speaking of the humour, I found Swing Girl’s funnier than Water Boys, wild boar scene > burning afro. Seriously, that wild boar scene had me laughing and dying so hard even on the second go. The comedy in Swing Girls is more “family friendly” I suppose because I didn’t find any of the humor objectionable and it’s more universal I think. I won’t write any more because I wouldn’t want to spoil it for you, just trust me, Swing Girls is FUNNY.

Movie perf.

First and last live concert

What’s interesting and impressive is that the actors actually PLAYED THEIR OWN MUSIC, prior to filming they had 3 months of lessons and boy have they improved. They sound like so professional and their last performance just BLEW ME AWAY, it was fun and toe tapping swing that just astounded me. What I really liked about this finale is that even though they played at a large concert hall they didn’t win a prize at the end (Sister Act) and I find prize giving finales really cliche.

Final Judgment
8 out of 10. Swing Girls almost always lifts my spirits up. It’s a great feel good movie for a rainy day and the music will have you tapping your toes all night. If you REALLY REALLY REALLY hate swing or jazz then you wouldn’t like this movie but you’re just missing out.