Classic Movie Review: 'Swing Kids'

Swing Kids (1993)

Directed by Thomas Carter

Written by Jonathan Marc Feldman

Starring Christian Bale, Robert Sean Leonard, Frank Whaley, Barbara Hershey

Release Date March 5th, 1993

Published June 21st, 1993

Swing Kids is an obnoxious movie about obnoxious characters being obnoxious amid the rising tensions and hatred of pre-World War 2 Germany. The story follows a group of young men, led by best friends, Peter (Leonard) and Thomas (Bale). All these boys want to do is dance, listen to records, and meet girls but their idyllic dance-floor utopia is interrupted by the rise of the Third Reich. The demand for conformity and discipline eventually takes hold of Thomas, who becomes a member of the Hitler Youth, straining not only his friendship to Peter but his loyalty to their bohemian, dancing, music loving, circle.

It's not a bad premise for a movie but as executed by director Thomas Carter, it captures mostly the obnoxious side of being a wild-eyed, horny teenager and the way those who may not have strong family lives, are more susceptible to seemingly charismatic cult leaders. Thomas falls in with the Hitler Youth because he is distant from his rich father, he craves the chance to belong to something, and he's in conflict with everyone else in his life, including Peter who refuses to fall in line with the S.S, and wants Thomas to remember that a member of their friend group, Arvid (Frank Whaley), is Jewish and thus very vulnerable at this point in time.

Whaley delivers the most interesting and compelling performance in Swing Kids as a Jazz loving, Jazz guitarist who refuses to compromise his Jewish background or his dedicated bohemian, communist morals. Though he is often framed by the film as being unreasonable in how he appears perfectly willing to die in order to defy the Nazis, Whaley gives the performance depth and weight beyond the box that the script and the direction place him in. Whaley's is a performance of deep conviction and sincerity, a counterpoint to Leonard's wishy-washy, non-committal approach and Bale's obnoxious embrace of all things Nazi.

The Bale-Leonard dynamic is exhausting. The movie is about each trying to reason with the other over some such thing and their bickering banter is often tedious, especially with little else to break the monotony. Multiple scenes find Bale's Thomas playfully but pointedly poking fun at Arvid, Arvid getting upset and defending himself, and Leonard having to play peacemaker. It's an exhausting formula that not even Whaley's quite good performance can entirely salvage. This is mostly because Bale has been directed to be such an ass and Leonard such a wimp, that each performance becomes a tiresome repetition of their dynamic.

The film is called Swing Kids so you might assume that dance plays a big role in the movie. You would be sadly mistaken. Though we see some Jazz dancing early in the film, and the scenes are well staged and dynamic, eventually, the Nazi story takes center stage and the defiance of the dancers in the face of Nazi oppression is squashed with relative ease by the Nazi characters. The dance scenes set the table and then a dreary melodrama about friends falling out over their conflicting opinions of the Nazis takes over as the main focus of the film.

You can sense that this is a movie that was intended to be about how art defies and topples empires, how the desire for freedom of expression can overcome obstacles. Dancing in defiance of the Nazi regime was a real thing in underground resistance clubs across Germany. And yet, Swing Kids fails to capture the heady excitement and danger of such a risky enterprise. Instead, what we get is a very middle of the road Robert Sean Leonard taking just a little too long to resist being a member of the S.S before he briefly becomes the face of defying Nazi rules.

Swing Kids was recently the subject of my new podcast, a spinoff of the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast, Everyone's a Critic 1993. Each week on the show, myself, and my co-hosts, teenager M.J and Gen-X-er Amy, watch a movie in chronological release order from 1993. Then we talk about how movies and popular culture have changed over the years and changed how these 30 year old movies are remembered today. It's a fun show that we all really love doing. Please check out the Everyone's a Critic 1993 Podcast on the Everyone's a Critic Movie Review Podcast feed, wherever you listen to podcasts.

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