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| • | Newest Major Reviews: | . | • | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | • | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
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1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
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1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if you want to hear Jerry Goldsmith at the very top of his comedy-writing talents. Avoid it... if the search and price of the album is not worth hearing a composer poke fun at himself and nearly every musical genre in the book. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Before proceeding, though, it's important to mention that The 'Burbs was created at the very height of Goldsmith's experimentation with electronics and sound effects in his music, and while some fans of the composer might argue in favor of Gremlins 2, Goldsmith never achieved the same hopelessly optimistic wackiness from The 'Burbs again. If you don't enjoy the sounds of shooting guns, barking dogs, and shattering glass in your music, then stop reading now. If you don't want to hear a parody of classic Goldsmith themes of era past, including the echoing brass motif from Patton, then stop reading now. If you can't handle a score that jumps from Gothic organs to Western rhythms in an instant without warning, then definitely stop reading now. Goldsmith's choice to score each character on the street with not only a different theme, but a theme embodied by an entirely different genre all together, is the key to success in The 'Burbs. Apart from the film, the music is very badly schizophrenic, a basic requirement of the story. Even Goldsmith's usual sounds of the era --thematic constructs that he would develop throughout the early 1990's-- were exaggerated to parody levels. The theme for the neighborhood overall would on paper be appropriate for half a dozen light dramas that Goldsmith would pen, but with his ridiculous instrumentation, yipping dog sounds, and overly-enthusiastic performance of the full ensemble, he twists it into the bizarre. A seductive female voice and exotic jungle-like drums over pipe organ in "A Nightmare in the 'Burbs," among a few other cues, is unlike anything the composer would write elsewhere. Wild viola work in that cue resembles Danny Elfman's more spirited ideas. A string motif in the previous cue, "Neighborhood Watch," combines a waltz-like rhythm that is interrupted on beat by the squeaking of a baby toy (a pull-duck, maybe?). The end title exhibits the various genres in snapshot succession, leaving your head spinning in the fantasy world that Dante intended to create in our own back yards. Only one serious cue exists in the film, and Goldsmith provides "Storytelling" with a caring string and woodwind piece while a grisly ghost story is being told on screen... a smartly counterintuitive move that serves to only increase the suspicions of the viewer. Most film music critics, while praising The 'Burbs as an above-average effort, sell this score short. Perhaps this is because the score is simply too silly to withstand, or maybe it's influenced by the music's scarcity on album. But The 'Burbs is the pinnacle of Goldsmith's comedy talent, and as such it belongs among the top ten classics in the composer's lengthier career. If this score doesn't bring a smirk to your face, then you should immediately seek either happy pills or the happy plant. The joy that Goldsmith must have had in conjuring up this work is self-evident, and on album it is the exact opposite of the intense labor that you hear out of something like Basic Instinct. The album exists only as the 10th entry in Varèse Sarabande's original club series, and is among the three most valuable of that group. Bootlegged forms of The 'Burbs began floating around the secondary market in the early 2000's, but with minimal extra material (consisting mostly of short snippets of themes performed in full on the club album) and with very substandard sound quality. Conversely, the quality of sound on the club album is superb, with the soundscape sculptured so carefully in the mixing that various elements within the sound effects and orchestral ensemble bounce with skill between the left and right sides. The entire grouping of sound effects that opens the "New Neighbors" cue enters the scene in only the right channel and slowly progresses back to center as the strings build up to one of the expansive electric guitar, bass string, and pipe organ motifs. As you might have guess by now, The 'Burbs is a friendly score to fans of bass-heavy music... a sub-woofer's delight. On album, because the cues are presented in film order, the score does switch genres and themes seemingly at will. Such is the way of a Dante film, so be aware and be prepared. What you might be unable to prepare yourself for is the price tag of an original copy of The 'Burbs, even though it really is worth the search. If you're simply trying to convince your roommates that film music is cool, however, The 'Burbs may not be the right choice. Playing portions of it over a building-wide intercom would not only get you punished, but would likely punch your ticket to an asylum... a sign of a perfect satirical score. *****
The insert includes detailed information by Kevin Mulhill about the score or film. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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