Swing

The Full Monty's inexplicably gigantic success was a nice enough story when it happened, but it got way out of hand, and we might have to live with the consequences for some time to come. I suspect that Swing will be merely the first of a barrage of lazy Full Monty-meets-The Commitments rewrites, with disturbing numbers of British film-makers coming to the conclusion that all a film needs to storm world box-offices is to set itself Oop North and base itself around a gang of down-at-heel layabouts triumphing over adversity via the stage.

Swing strives desperately to attain a feelgood, uplifting, heartwarming tone, but falls flat on its face at an early stage, mainly as a result of its unforgivably pedestrian and predictable narrative. While Monty was undeniably funny and instantly engaging, Swing suffers from a total absence of magic, and there are astoundingly few laughs to be found over the course of what was presumably meant to be a comedy.

Set in Liverpool, and pandering to just about every stereotype popularly associated with the city, Swing relates the rags-to-riches tale of a few Scouser scallies who form a swing band (really) in order to overcome their various deprivations. The rest is straight out of the genre textbook, with a lack of imagination that borders on the depressing.

The appearance of such thespian giants as Paul Usher (Brookie's Barry Grant) only adds to the cheapo made-for-TV flavour of the whole thing, and the Scouser stereotyping comes across as patronising rather than genuinely fond. The music itself is also accorded way too much running time: just how desperately does the world need to hear a third-division Liverpool brass band playing straight Xerox retreads of It Ain't What You Do, Mack The Knife and the like? Stansfield's vocals reprise the songs competently but a shade too faithfully: had the material been approached with less reverence, it might have sounded a good deal fresher.

Whether one approaches Swing as a comedy, a musical or a drama, it doesn't really work on any of the intended levels. I dearly hope it's the last film of its kind for some time.