Swing Girls

If a feel good story about beating the odds really fits your fancy, Swing Girls could be for you.

Swing Girls, released in 2004, revolves around a group of high school girls (and one boy) and their dream to start a jazz band. But don’t expect the usual Hollywood cliches, full of rival bands, opposing parents, bans on music, and other extreme circumstances.

Flighty Tomoko and a few classmates are stuck at a summer school math class, when they are given the opportunity to deliver lunches to the school’s brass band playing for a baseball game, thus finding an excuse to escape the drudgery. But they miss their stop and take forever to get to their destination on time. By then the food has gone bad, making every member of the band (save for a boy named Takuo) violently ill. Knowing that the girls are at fault, Takuo guilts them into joining the brass band and replacing the missing members until they get back. But they don’t have enough members for brass, so Takuo decides on Big Band. Such a simple decision leads to a destiny perhaps none of them could have predicted.

It is worth noting that the kids actually learned how to play instruments for the film, so you’re actually seeing their progression from iffy to great; it’s not just acting!