Buy it... for the vintage and re-recorded jazz classics that were the reason the film was made.

Avoid it... if you're a James Horner collector who would need to navigate through the jazz to get to the drab and uninspired underscore.

Horner

Swing Kids: (James Horner) Few people know that during the height of Hitler's reign in Germany, there was a loyal and popular following of American jazz music. The youths that enjoyed the likes of Benny Goodman and Count Basie were, of course, engaging in what the Third Reich considered illegal behavior, and the film attempts to show their resilience in the name of music... to an extent. Where Swing Kids utterly fails as a movie is in its treatment of everything outside of the jazz itself. Almost as though the filmmakers made the 1930's jazz the main attraction of the film, they managed to neglect the gravity of the surrounding social and political events. While you become attached to a certain number of 'swing kids' in the story, the film makes only vague and distant references to the persecution and war around them. When the kids are forced to either enlist in the army or be sent to concentration camps, their reactions aren't really clear, for in their jazz-centered view on life, they seem to have no feelings whatsoever for the Jews. This is especially strange given the complete logical misstep that the film makes by forgetting that if it weren't for Jews, there wouldn't have been music by Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw to enjoy. At any rate, the film's lack of focus is important for soundtrack collectors because that disjointed attention within the film causes significant problems for the album from the film as well. Composer James Horner was at the height of his discovery of human drama in 1993, a year that featured both The Pelican Brief and Searching for Bobby Fischer, and he would be called upon to once again place the same weighty hand of orchestral emotion on Swing Kids. The only problem is that Horner was put into a position to write a score for the horrors of war, and he would have absolutely nothing to contribute in the genre of the classic jazz, which is a shame given that Horner had proven in Field of Dreams and in snippets from comedy scores that he was indeed capable of offering an extension of that sound.

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To say that Horner's underscore in Swing Kids is overshadowed by the jazz is an understatement. To discuss the actual 23 minutes of score available on the commercial album, a disclaimer must be made right at the start that Horner seems to have bowed to the jazz music in the sense that he doesn't really attempt write music that competes with it. Fully orchestral, the score rumbles in the depths of heavily mixed bass strings, with neo-classical chord progressions ominously churning the background as an adult choir (as opposed to his usual children's or strictly women's choirs) sometimes coveys vocals with the same style as in the opening and closing of Red Heat. A sense of urgency in the deliberate snare and cymbal-tapping is defied by the often excruciatingly slow tempo of his cues. Perhaps this is just an illusion due to the score being surrounded by such quick jazz pieces. But compared to other applicable war material by Horner, including Enemy at the Gates in a most related sense, only the tolling of chimes really ties this material to such similar assignments. As the film has difficulty pinpointing the exact personalities of the kids, and their reasons for doing what they do, Horner stays away from the murky waters of such personalities. In fact, he provides no thematic material throughout the film, further allowing his score to slip away very quickly from memory. The jazz, on the other hand, was obviously the main intent for making the film, and even down to its louder mixing on album, the producers had the jazz first and foremost on their minds. And the jazz is very good in most cases, with a strong selection from the era appearing in the film. The album is an extreme disappointment, however. Viewers of the film will want a compilation of the jazz heard in its length, and Horner collectors will have only a 50-50 chance of being even remotely interested in that jazz. Unfortunately, the album mixes the two elements, mingling score tracks in between jazz (both vintage and re-recorded), causing both to suffer. The album was badly in need of separation of these two halves of music, because Horner's score does little more than cast a shadow over Benny Goodman. As for Horner's part, the slight inspiration of individuality in the final cue cannot compensate for the extremely drab nature of the score's entirety. **

Bias Check:

For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.12 (in 89 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.34 (in 158,769 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.