Out Of Step -- Conservative Tempo Of `Swing Kids' Can't Capture Passion Of German Dance Craze

XX "Swing Kids," with Robert Sean Leonard, Christian Bale, Frank Whaley, Barbara Hershey, Kenneth Branagh. Directed by Thomas Carter, from a script by Jonathan Marc Feldman. Alderwood, Aurora, John Danz, Renton Village, SeaTac Mall, Uptown. "PG-13" - Parental guidance advised because of language, subject matter. --------------------------------------------------------------- It's 1939 in Hamburg, and Hitler is cracking down on long-haired, savvy German teenagers who gather to dance to American swing music.

One by one the jazz greats have been banned, but the kids revel in their defiance. American records are re-labeled to outwit the slow-witted authorities. Bands that specialize in verboten music have learned to shift quickly into German anthems as soon as they're threatened. The Nazis haven't yet banned the music of Count Basie because "they probably think he's the head of a country."

For a while, this new Disney movie maintains a giddy quality of youthful rebellion that almost convinces you that these kids can successfully defy the government even during the darkest days of the Nazi takeovers of Poland and Czechoslovakia. Then it gradually becomes a Hollywood dirge, a safe and somewhat sanitized message movie that never approaches the conviction and complexity of such recent German films about anti-Nazi youths as "The White Rose" and "Europa Europa."

With its mostly American cast rarely bothering to affect German accents, "Swing Kids" often resembles MGM's 1940 drama "The Mortal Storm," in which James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Stack and Robert Young played young Germans divided by loyalties to the fatherland and the Nazis. But that movie was timely and brave, so much so that it led to Germany banning all MGM films.

Even with the current neo-Nazi stirrings in Germany, "Swing Kids" isn't likely to get itself banned for anything. At worst, it simplifies the situation intolerably, failing to make believable the transformation of one central character from swing kid to Hitler Youth fanatic. His betrayal of his family carries almost no dramatic weight, and the final confrontation between him and his former best friend is an embarrassment.

At best, the movie creates some interesting tensions between the most conscience-stricken of the boys (Robert Sean Leonard) and a manipulative Nazi (Kenneth Branagh) who uses the boy's mother (Barbara Hershey). A cleverly handled dinner scene in which the boy turns the Nazi's tricks against him is almost enough to keep the movie's morose, choppy second half from collapsing.

Leonard and Branagh give the strongest performances, but then they have the only roles that don't come off as one-dimensional. We're never quite sure which way they're going to turn. Christian Bale and Frank Whaley are stuck with a lot of screen time and hardly anything to do. The resourceful Hershey does what she can with an underwritten part.

"Swing Kids" marks the big-screen debuts of television director Thomas Carter ("Hill Street Blues") and playwright Jonathan Marc Feldman. They bring a no-frills professional competence to the film that allows much of it to work on a straightforward TV-movie level, but during the final scenes they almost trivialize the subject. There must be a way to demonstrate that a dance step can be a ferocious act of civil disobedience, but they haven't found it.