Can you make it on the Drumline?
The 2002 film Drumline has just been released on Blu-ray from Fox Home Entertainment.
Devon Miles (Nick Cannon – Men in Black II, Day of the Dead 2008) has just graduated High School and has been accepted to Atlanta A&T in Georgia. The school has a famous marching band in which the school takes a lot of pride in. Early in the film we learn that Devon has been granted a full scholarship to A&T by the head of the band, Dr. Lee (Orlando Jones – Evolution, The Time Machine, Pushing Daisies). The band differentiates themselves from other bands by using classic marching band music as opposed to the standard popular music from the radio. In addition to the musical variation the band incorporates a high level of athleticism into their routines. The students must audition in a fiercely competitive manner for positions on the field.
Devon (being the star of the movie) of course makes the band and becomes the only Freshman to take the position of P1 (the most coveted position on the team). Because of these factors, Devin becomes a bit too full of himself and gets the attention of Sean, the band’s percussion leader. Sean tries to humiliate Devin but it ends up backfiring and Devin’s success ends up humiliating Sean instead! We soon learn that Devin cannot actually read music and this leads to his demotion to P4 by Dr. Lee who is under pressure from the President of the College to change the style of their musical performance. Devon actually instigates a fight with a rival college and gets kicked off the team by Dr. Lee who has had enough of his actions. Well Devin gets upset to the point where he goes to a rival school and offers to join their team next year but then realizes that he would be making a mistake and withdraws the offer and returns to A&T.
He and Sean work through their differences and create a new piece of music which they submit to Dr. Lee for approval. Lee approves and gives Devon permission to play in the challenge against their rival school. Crazy-mad drum skills are demonstrated in the challenge against their rival and A&T ends up winning the event! Yay! (Oh wait, spoilers)
Special Features
-Half Time Heroes Featurette
-Anatomy of a Drumline Featurette
-The Real Battle of the Bands Featurette
-4 Deleted Scenes with Optional Commentary
-Audio Commentary by Director Charles Stone III
Overall
This movie had a great depiction of a teenager using his talents to get ahead in life. Devon has to overcome some obstacles but then realizes how to best use his talents and what is truly important in life….and we get to see a positive interpretation of the Drumline mentality. It takes a lot to do what these people do and some real crazy mad skill-Z (with a capital “Z”).
The reason to get this on Blu-ray is for the audio. With a musical movie like this, you may not be concerned with counting the acne on the high schoolers’ faces in 1080p, but you want to put this over your surround sound and crank it up for the crisp clean audio that simply cannot be afforded by DVD
ComicsOnline gives DrumLine 3 out of 5 crazy-mad drum filled movies.
