"Drumline," the Movie

Yesterday I watched the movie "Drumline," which was a fun little combination of fish-out-of-water comedy and feel-good, overcoming adversity, growing as a person, follow your dream, there's-no-I-in-team sports movie, only set in the competitive world of southern historically black college marching bands.

The plot and characterization were both fine - especially when you think about how bad it could be; even the implausible (but sweet) love story was handled okay. And they captured many of the elements that are familiar to all marching band members: the boot camp nature of the early practices, the agony of being challenged for your position, each section's belief that their own instrument is the most important.

Of course, the most enjoyable part to me was just watching the bands (and their scantily clad dance teams, obviously included as eye candy for those whose love of marching bands does not go very deep) perform. The battle of the drumlines was exciting and entertaining. Stylistically, they definitely err on the side of crowd-pleasing, and it was interesting to see how physical the performances were - acrobatic and dancelike.

Especially when compared to those of, say, my high school marching band, in which the typical (white) member was only slightly more fluidly rhythmic than Al Gore. We went in for very elaborate marching designs and relatively difficult pieces of music. Our first piece (of the 3 in the competition set) was "Pictures at an Exhibition," which is music I love; the opening notes of the brass are now incredibly evocative for me of those early morning practices late in the season: the moments I'm standing still on the field at 7:00 a.m., with the wind blowing my hair, waiting for it all to begin. I hated a lot of things about band (hence I quit after 10th grade) but I did like that, and the fact that we were pretty damn good.

I learned from Roger Ebert that Morris Brown College, which is the main competitor to the band we follow, is a real school. (And a song by Outkast, according to my Google results.)

One of the things not dealt with in the film directly is the degree to which having money for instruments, gorgeous new uniforms and flags, etc., plays a role in marching band competition success; we do get a sense of the financial issues involved, and Morris Brown puts on quite the expensive show, but the issue of tons of money -> flashier show -> winning is not spelled out. However, this aspect is handled well and to good comedic effect in Kurt Vonnegut's short story "The No Talent Kid," (which, incidentally, I came across as a junior high English class substitute teacher). The story is only 7 pages long and greatly amusing to anyone with school band experience.