I really don't understand a lot of these reviewers. The movie far from trivializes anything about the Nazis, it simply tries to portray a moment before the bloodiest war in history on a smallish scale.
Would it be better to just have a movie that says "Nazis are bad and they killed six million Jews."? No, because that wouldn't be a movie.
It's like when people complained that a mini-series about Hitler's life that was supposed to be shown on TV would "humanize Hitler". Well, news flash, he WAS a human. That's the worst part, a human could do that sort of thing. What good is it to call evil-doers monsters and then leave it at that? When "Swing Kids" succeeds is when it's portraying the conflicts of youth as their country goes mad. Can anyone honestly say they feel NO sympathy for those who were forced to join the Hitler youth? It's easy to say you would have done different.
And the idea that the music being key somehow trivializes the events of WWII, um, it's based on an ACTUAL subculture, swing kids. There were lots of them and at first they were fairly lacking in politics, but later in the 40s when they were cracked down on more so by the Nazis some were more active.
It's not like the movie makers pulled the concept of kids, Nazis and swing out of their asses, which is what people seem to think.
And at least it was something, at least it wasn't giving in totally. Remember these were young kids, high-school age, nobody can expect them all to be Sophie Scholl.
Where "Swing Kids" lacks is its occasional excessive heavy-handedness. The ending is a bit excessive, something more subtle would have been better.
But as I say, the conflicts between the three main leads are fantastic and bring up questions of what you would do in such circumstances. I think the boys's indifference in respect to the Jew being beat up in the beginning of the movie is a good touch. This is NOT about the holocaust, because it was just starting and was largely unknown at the time. I hate when people can't lose what they know to watch a movie.
I recommend everyone to read some swing kids history, just look them up, it makes the movie much better and more interesting to know the facts.
This is a fairly good movie with very good acting, great great music and costumes, a great story that was influenced by deeply interesting history, and too much heavy handedness.
But seriously, who can resist a movie put out by Disney that includes the line of dialog "You're turning into a f*cking Nazi!"?
