Offbeat Cops / Ido Jirei wa Ongakutai! jmovie review

I have not seen Abe Hiroshi in anything good since Dragon Zakura 2. DCU was just bad and now we have an Abe Hiroshi learns to drum movie. Abe plays a grumpy detective Naruse  who  is trying to solve catch this gang that has been targeting old people by pretending to be police to find out where their money is and then robbing them. Naruse like to break rules too much and finally after a complaint from a fellow police officer is transferred to the police music band hence the Japanese title of the movie.

Naruse does not communicate well with his colleagues, his wife has left him, his mother has dementia and he does not know how to interact with his daughter. Naruse's life is at the lowest when the joins the band and encounters a bunch of underdogs of the police force, people who have to do their regular police duties and also do band practice.

Offbeat cops is basically Swing Girls set in the police world. If you have not watched Swing Girls, it is one of the best feel good jmovies ever created and it is the template on which a lot of feel good movies try to build on and Offbeat Cops try to emulate.

Offbeat cops is an unabashedly feel good movie. There are your obvious Naruse character growth moments as he learns to be a better person blah blah blah and plenty of sappy moments as Naruse connects with his band mates and learns to accept that he is no longer a detective. The joy on Abe Hiroshi's face when he learns to drum is infectious and you know he had a good time making this. I think getting paid to play music is a great job and I was wondering why everyone was so gloomy at the beginning of the movie. 

My problem with Offbeat Cops is that the script doesn't feel as polished as Swing Girls. It is emulating the beats and it tries to hit the notes but it feels like a poorer version of that movie. I had fun but I feel like I have seen it done so much better before and the script just needed more cooking. Plus they should have went for a different music for the final musical performance. Maybe they intentionally wanted to invoke Swing Girls. Watchable, just don't expect Swing Girls level of excellence. Thanks to Madmansubs for hardsubbing!