The ridiculously misleading ads for "Swing Kids" make give the illusion that the film is a happy-go-lucky, big-band version of "Newsies," right down to the casting of one of the same stars, Christian Bale.
Unfortunately, "Swing Kids" is instead a tepid, pretentious melodrama that happens to contain a few rousing dance-hall sequences but abbreviates every one of them with some kind of violent confrontation.
Robert Sean Leonard, the sensitive young man who was driven to suicide in "Dead Poets Society," has the lead role as the sensitive young man who is, more or less, the leader of a group of friends who call themselves "Swing Kids." They are young Germans in 1939 who defy the onrush of Nazism by embracing all things American, chiefly the jazzy music of Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Gene Krupa, etc.
These kids meet in the evening at dance halls around the city and happily lose touch with reality (in scenes that are magnificently, if unrealistically, choreographed), thanks to the music. In between sets, they practice American slang. (Meanwhile, some of the cast members affect German accents, some do not.)
The film, which appears to be the victim of choppy editing, is big and good-looking but can't get past the screenplay's predictable pitfalls.
When they reach a certain age, young men are forced to join the Nazi Youth. So it goes with the "Swing Kids," save one, a musician with a crippled foot (Frank Whaley), an idealist who plays only American pop. Another (Bale) comes to enjoy Nazism a bit too much, defying his friends and eventually turning in his own father, who has been vocally critical of Hitler. Through all this, Leonard tries to deal with his own conflicted feelings, which include confronting the fact that his father died a martyr — a renowned classical musician and professor, he was persecuted for trying to aid some Jewish friends.
And now, Leonard's mother (Barbara Hershey), who tries to make ends meet by working in a factory, has been taking up with a new suitor, an ingratiating, high-ranking Gestapo official (unbilled Kenneth Branagh in a riveting performance that embodies understated evil).
There is also a go-nowhere romance between Leonard and a young woman who is ignorant of swing.
This last plot element, like others, is begun, then quickly dropped, with no apparent thought to tying up loose ends. In between these digressions, the kids must decide whether to give in and follow Hitler's war machine or be independent and wind up in a juvenile work camp.
It's not hard during the film's first third to pick out those who will remain defiant and those who will weaken.
The performances here are all quite good and the enthusiastic dance scenes are toe-tapping highlights. But in the end the sentiment rings as false as many of the characters, and ultimately one wonders what the filmmakers really had in mind.
"Swing Kids" is rated PG-13 but has some rather brutal violence, as well as profanity, vulgarity and nude photos.