For love of music, that's all this movie is about, no more and certainly never less. As a result of a food poisoning accident, thirteen high school girls who know next to nothing about music are drafted to be trained to fill in for the school's brass orchestra. But when the regulars manage to recover sooner than expected, the backup girls fake a sigh of relieve but soon find that they have fallen in love with music.
While most soon get side-tracked, four of them love the music so much that they form the "Swing Girls". This comprises a sax player, the main character (next to the music, that is) and not surprisingly the prettiest one, a bespectacled timid trombone player, a girl who needs the sight of a rat to hit the high note on the trumpet (the obvious clown of the lot) and the slightly overweighed drummer. Added to them are two wild-looking electric guitar players who would want to be anywhere where music is played, and a guy on the keyboard.
It takes the group a while to find their rhythm with jazz, until the melody of "Coming through the rye" from a traffic light gives them the magical inspiration they need. The rest of the girls now come back to join them.
There are anecdotes and other characters aplenty along the way, some funny, some banal, but the movie never wavers from the theme, which is the group's love of music. The ending is appropriately uplifting, when the band finally gets a chance to do its thing in a national high school competition. Winning is not even important, only finding of an appreciative audience.
All the characters in the movie are well likable and there is ever-popular Naoto Takenaka. As the end credit rolls, we see the names of the cast the way they would appear in a programme of an orchestral concert, grouped under the sections of instruments they play. The girls (and one guy) actually performed themselves and the success of the intensive training they received before the shooting of the movie is quite evident.
Altogether a sweet little film that will be loved by all who love music.
While most soon get side-tracked, four of them love the music so much that they form the "Swing Girls". This comprises a sax player, the main character (next to the music, that is) and not surprisingly the prettiest one, a bespectacled timid trombone player, a girl who needs the sight of a rat to hit the high note on the trumpet (the obvious clown of the lot) and the slightly overweighed drummer. Added to them are two wild-looking electric guitar players who would want to be anywhere where music is played, and a guy on the keyboard.
It takes the group a while to find their rhythm with jazz, until the melody of "Coming through the rye" from a traffic light gives them the magical inspiration they need. The rest of the girls now come back to join them.
There are anecdotes and other characters aplenty along the way, some funny, some banal, but the movie never wavers from the theme, which is the group's love of music. The ending is appropriately uplifting, when the band finally gets a chance to do its thing in a national high school competition. Winning is not even important, only finding of an appreciative audience.
All the characters in the movie are well likable and there is ever-popular Naoto Takenaka. As the end credit rolls, we see the names of the cast the way they would appear in a programme of an orchestral concert, grouped under the sections of instruments they play. The girls (and one guy) actually performed themselves and the success of the intensive training they received before the shooting of the movie is quite evident.
Altogether a sweet little film that will be loved by all who love music.