I remember seeing the trailer for this movie in 1993 and sitting in the theater slack-jawed. As another reviewer said, it looked like "GREASE With Swastikas." Or more accurately, it's HOGAN'S HEROES meets THE BREAKFAST CLUB, with Kenneth Branagh as Colonel Klink. In any case, watching the trailer, I was shocked by the sheer tastelessness of the whole concept, and I avoided the film like the plague.Many years later, I rented the film from the library, and was surprised to find that it's . . . really not that bad. The music is amazing, the dancing is great, and a lot of the teen friendships and heartbreak are surprisingly touching. What sinks the movie is that the director Thomas Carter can't edit and never settles on a single story line to follow. There's too much going on, and moments of danger and terror are buried under endless scenes of squabbling and teenage silliness. Some performances are brilliant. Christian Bales steals every scene he's in, going from being a great guy and the ideal best friend to being a terrifying Nazi informer. He's playing the same part Marcus Boyd played in BEN HUR, only he's much, much, better at it. The only problem is, Robert Sean Leonard is no Charlton Heston! He just looks weak through most of the movie, and when he hits the dance floor alone in the epic finale he just looks like a boy on the verge of an epileptic fit. You can't jitterbug your way out of Germany, son!On the far side of brilliant, Kenneth Branagh is unquestionably the world's least menacing Nazi. What's next, Hugh Grant as Heinrich Himmler? Branagh's flabby face and tired physique give the impression of a guy nursing a pint in some pub, not a brutal killer and master manipulator. It's really pathetic that Christian Bales is half his age and ten times more deadly!One final note: Tushka Bergen was perfectly cast and stunning as Evie. The trailer makes it look like she's a major love interest in the film, but you only see about five minutes of her in the movie. Did I mention that Thomas Carter doesn't know how to edit?

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.

"Swing Kids" underperformed at the box office, received bad reviews, but today maintains a cult following. Reading the reviews from the film's 1993 release, critics seemed to be ticked off mostly by the fact that the film depicted a seemingly trivial demographic in a horrific time and place. Their argument was understandable: if such mass genocide and political corruption was taking place, why would we want to know about German teenagers who were obsessed with American swing music? My question is, why would we NOT want to know about them?Had "Swing Kids" been released some time after Steven Spielberg's epic "Schindler's List", critics may not have been quick to bring up that point. However, "Cabaret" (1972) was also about Berlin counterculture amidst the rise of the Nazi party, and no one seemed to have a problem with that film."Swing Kids" is by no means a perfect film, but it also shouldn't be dismissed specifically because it doesn't take place in a concentration camp, and no one can be seen being tortured or killed. It's a small footnote, but by no means an uninteresting story.The movie centers around Peter Muller (Robert Sean Leonard, who I couldn't help but think bore a striking resemblance to Jim Carrey in this movie), a German student barely out of his teens who, along with his friends Thomas (Christian Bale) and Arvid (Frank Whaley), love to stay out late and dance to big band swing music. They wear their hair long, own zoot suits, and are rebellious against the Nazis at first for rebellion's sake. They don't seem to be phased by the Nazi's propaganda against the Jews and other ethnicities until later in the film, although that point is not clarified well in the beginning.Peter reluctantly joins the Nazis when his mother's significant other, Herr Major Knopp (Kenneth Branagh), pulls some strings after Peter's arrest involving a stolen radio. His other option is to be sent to jail, or perhaps even a concentration camp. Thomas enlists as well just to join Peter, but they ultimately don't give up their night life of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. However, the more Peter learns about the Nazis, the more he hates them. Thomas, on the other hand, falls into the Nazi propaganda over time.The overall story is told pretty well here. Robert Sean Leonard is good as the moral compass of the story. Nowadays, I'm used to seeing Christian Bale in either villainous roles ("American Psycho" (2000), "The Prestige" (2006)), or as heroes with a noticeable dark side ("The Dark Knight" (2008), "Terminator: Salvation" (2009)). However, here Bale plays a guy who is a genuinely good friend at first, and his good acting made me forget about his later roles. At the same time, when his character becomes entrenched in the Nazi life, Bale somehow made this dramatic transition smoothly without seeming contrived.Frank Whaley is also effective as the crippled friend Arvid, who can't join the Nazi army even if he wanted to because of his condition. Arvid plays jazz guitar, and knows a lot about American jazz. He is frequently bullied and beaten by Nazi soldiers his age, but still has energy to rebel. Whereas Leonard is the moral compass here, Whaley is the heart. I can't give away what happens to Arvid in this movie, but you really do feel for him as the movie progresses."Swing Kids" has a very good story, and characters good and bad that you really care about. Among the major weaknesses in this movie is the fact that it takes place entirely in Germany, yet none of the characters actually speak German. Normally that fact would not be a problem, but my issue was that the good guys here spoke with either American or British accents, whereas the villains (such as Branaugh) spoke with a heavy German accent. It's as if Hollywood hasn't gotten over the idea that German or Russian accents sound evil, even long after World War II and the Cold War ended. In this story, it goes without saying that accents shouldn't matter.This is why I think the movie would have worked better as a foreign film made by Germans, rather than an American film made by the Disney company. If everyone was speaking German, allegedly evil accents wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand, "Cabaret" had good guys in it that had German accents. Why couldn't this film?Also, perhaps I'm asking too much here, but the written epilogue at the end wasn't enough for me. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, not every film that takes place during World War II has to be dark and depressing, but it would have been nice to have received a glimpse of what these swing kids went through in concentration camps, how they coped, and whether they got out alive or not. Maybe such a broad subject could still be the basis for another movie, but just two written sentences before the credits broke the Golden Rule of Storytelling: Show, Don't Tell.This film would have benefited from being shelved for at least a year, and perhaps being released a little while after "Schindler's List" made its run. Compared to concentration camps, young men in Germany who loved American music seems insignificant in comparison, but by no means does it discredit the alternative history lesson from being told. Critics could have been more open-minded to the movie, but the good thing is that the film now has a cult following. It still nags me that the film wasn't in German, though. At least it has historical accuracy on its side.

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.