Buy it... if you value scores that rank highly on the "fun meter," in this case a George S. Clinton parody jab drenched in personality, rhythm, funk, and distinct Hawaiian flavor.

Avoid it... if a Hawaiian lap steel, a ukulele, a baritone sax, and lazy jazz rhythms earn the same disdain with which you hold Elmore Leonard's equally quirky stories.

Clinton

The Big Bounce: (George S. Clinton) The stories of writer Elmore Leonard have inspired over 30 feature films over several decades, and it seems that each of those adaptations does its best to capture and extend Leonard's distinct voice onto the big screen. Sadly, most of them are unsuccessful in providing movie-goers with the same delight that the original written stories do, with the film director's own voice (such as Barry Sonnenfeld for Get Shorty, Quentin Tarantino for Jackie Brown, and Steven Soderbergh for Out of Sight, just to mention some of the more recent Leonard adaptations) often pushing the original flavor to a distant corner where only the elaborately designed characters themselves are left to project the author's genius. Few will argue that Leonard's plots, however, are as attractive as his characters in the first place, and The Big Bounce falls along similar lines. This remake of a forgotten 1969 adaptation did attract some high acting talent for its often outrageous characters, but outside of a casual 2:00 a.m. television viewing when you have insomnia, the result is not something to look forward to. The film was equally assaulted by critics and audiences during a dull period of cinema in early 2004, and it faded quickly from theatres. Lacking any kind of narrative flow or logical plot, the film attempted to enchant you with its quirky personality, and a key ingredient in brewing that appeal is the score by George S. Clinton. No stranger to the outrageous, the contemporary, and the funky, Clinton was probably best known in the film score industry at the time for his efforts to bring retro-styled coolness to the Austin Powers franchise. If you're in the mood for his kind of modern, uncomplicated funk, then both the Austin Powers scores and The Big Bounce will serve you well, the latter thankfully leaving behind most of the 1960's influences. To get a feeling for the laid-back personality of The Big Bounce, imagine the same general elements and saucy atmosphere of Clinton's strangely addictive music for Wild Things and project them into a dance of the major key with an overflow of Hawaiian spice. It's for movies like The Big Bounce that Clinton writes some of his best material, and in this circumstance he does not disappoint.

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Hidden in this seemingly ridiculous, tongue and cheek score is music that is, compared to the vast majority of soundtracks on the market in the digital age, remarkably original in tone and bursting with personality at every moment. To achieve a sound appropriate for a scene of absurd Hawaiian crime in The Big Bounce, Clinton lays down a bed of slow, lazy jazz rhythms below instrumentation that you don't often hear in post-2000 scores but is remarkably effective in its jabs at Hawaiian stereotypes. An orchestra consisting of a moderate string section, a handful of woodwinds, a few French horns, and a percussionist or two plays a purely background role to the soloists who perform on the Hawaiian lap steel, ukulele, baritone sax, and more contemporary percussion. The lap steel, ukulele, and flighty woodwinds (in the innocent style of yesteryear) cause the score to drip with common conceptions of Hawaiian flavor, almost to a fault, but keep in mind that the characters and location in the plot are just as much "over the top" as the score, so the tone well serves the comedy purposes. The sax ripples with the familiar burps and echoes heard in Wild Things, and while The Big Bounce churns with the same sensual rhythms as the prior score, Clinton replaces the heavy drums and electric guitars with the plucking string section of the orchestra, producing a more high-crime, big-band era feel. The brass section seems to only perform in "The Body" near the end, while the piano often rumbles through soft and pleasant themes when the score is at its most sincere. Those hearty moments, however, are not the fun parts of The Big Bounce. If you get hooked on this score, then it will be cues such as "Upstairs/Downstairs," which allows the deep sax to set the most purely infectious rhythm of the score, and "Main Title," which unleashes all of the sound effects and specialty instruments in one piano-rambling statement of the main theme, complete with the simply hilarious sounds of male exertion. You almost wish these expressions ("Hay!" and "Hee!") were included throughout the rest of the score. The sappy finale cue, "Sail Away," concludes with 45 ultra-happy seconds of carefree ensemble joy reminiscent of Randy Newman's 1950's throwback tones. There is personality in The Big Bounce that reminds of early Danny Elfman in its ability to be thoroughly silly without restraint, and if you enjoy scores that rank highly on the "fun meter," then The Big Bounce will cause you to leak some energy out of your feet. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download