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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 films 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 recent Leonard adaptations) often pushing the original flavor to a
distant corner where only the elaborately designed characters themselves can
sometimes project that Leonard genious. Few will argue that Leonard's plots,
however, are as attractive as his characters, and
The Big Bounce
falls into that same description. 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,
it's not something to look forward to. The film was equally assaulted by
critics and audiences during a mostly dull period of cinema in early 2004,
and it faded quickly from theatres. Lacking any kind of flow or logical
plot, the film attempted to enchant you with its quirky personality, and a
key ingredient in that appeal was the score by George S. Clinton. No
stranger to the outrageous, the contemporary, and the funky, Clinton is
probably best known in the film score industry at the moment for all of this
Austin Powers efforts. 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. Imagine the same general elements and saucy
atmosphere of Clinton's addictive
Wild Things score and project them
into a dance of the major key with an overflow of Hawaiian spice.
It's at moments like this when George S. Clinton writes
some of his best material. Hidden in a seemingly ridiculous, tongue and
cheek score is music that is --compared to the vast majority of film scores
on the market today-- enjoyable and bursting with personality at every
moment. To achieve a scene of absurd Hawaiian crime, Clinton layers slow,
lazy jazz rhythms below instrumentation that you don't often hear in scores
these days, but is remarkably effective in its Hawaiian application. 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
Hawaiian flavor... almost to a fault. But keep in mind that the characters
and location in the film are just as much "over the top" as the score. The
sax ripples with the same burps and echoes as heard in
Wild Things,
and while
The Big Bounce churns with the same sensual rhythms as does
Wild Things, Clinton replaces the heavy drums and electric guitars
with the plucking string section of the orchestra, producing a more
high-crime, band era sound. The brass seem to only perform in the "Body" cue
near the end, while the piano often rumbles soft and pleasant themes when
the score is at its most sincere. The moments of sincerity, 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 offers the deep
sax setting the most purely infectious rhythm of the score, and the opening
"Main Title," which unleashes all of the sound effects and specialty
instruments in one piano-rambling statement of theme, complete with the
sounds of male exertion ("Hay!" --you almost wish these were included
throughout the rest of the score). 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 is your ticket.
****
The insert includes a list of performers, but no extra information about the score or film.
