Buy it... if you are attracted to Rachel Portman's quirky comedy rhythms and want to hear her make the most out of a small and eclectic (but enthusiastic) ensemble.

Avoid it... if nothing about the standard whimsical style of Portman's lighter shades appeals to your preference for her weightier romantic dramas.

Portman

The Closer You Get: (Rachel Portman) Fox Searchlight's 2000 follow-up to their surprising hit The Full Monty is a similarly themed arthouse picture, but this time pouring on the comedy inherent in Irish culture. Four men in a small town in Ireland meet nightly at a pub to moan over the fact that there isn't a good selection of women in the area. With few in the town enjoying the benefits of marriage, the local priest becomes a consistent target of the film's comedy. The men place an advertisement soliciting American women for their town's annual St. Martha's Day Dance (and themselves) in a Miami newspaper and are dismayed when the local women irritatingly respond by inviting a bunch of Spanish fishermen to the affair. In the end, the right matches are there all along if only the belligerent folks of the town would realize it. Becoming a regular in the arthouse scene during the late 1990's was composer Rachel Portman, who likely would have won a second Oscar had she scored The Full Monty instead of Anne Dudley. Portman's low key work for The Closer You Get couldn't compare with her mainstream appeal caused by scores like The Cider House Rules, but collectors of the composer's work can't help but love the spunk that she adds to funky little romantic comedies like this one. She throws the best of her usual, upbeat, charming, and small-scale style to help the story along from joke to joke. The small budget and provincial personality of the film allowed for only a limited ensemble of players to be hired for this score. Portman employs a handful of specialty artists, including a majority of woodwinds (she sure does love those woodwinds), a few guitars, banjo, accordion, electric bass, a single violin, marimba, and some light band percussion. There seems to be some synthetic, keyboarded elements in parts, but they serve only to flesh out the background of a few cues. The bass clarinet gets the most airtime in the score.

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The quirky performing group makes the most of their instruments through bouncing, likable rhythms that any loyal Portman fan would enjoy. They're along the same lines of The Road to Wellville, but at far less hyperactive and voluminous levels. While her usual strings are absent, she relies heavily upon the woodwinds and guitars to produce the basis for each rhythmic movement. With so little score employed in the film, Portman makes almost constant use of one of her two themes for The Closer You Get. Both are provided in succession in "End Titles Suite," with the funky comedy theme and its infectious rhythm followed by the more tender character/romance theme. The primary theme hits you immediately in "The Closer You Get" and swings with a jazzy movement very typical to Portman's favored chord progressions. The enthusiasm of the performances of this theme, extending to even more exuberant presentations in "Hope Springs Eternal" and "Why Wouldn't They?," are what will cause your butt to wiggle in your seat. The latter cue uses a bass woodwind and electric bass to kick the tempo into high gear for electric guitar to cooly explore the theme. The character theme is easily overshadowed in the score, with acoustic guitar performances in "Sean & Ella" and "There's a Suit" always yielding to the more attractive primary theme. The biggest detriment of the score on album is its brevity. Portman's music on the product only amounts to roughly fifteen minutes, so to be interested in the album for its score contents, you have to consider yourself a big fan of her styles. The majority of running time is occupied by famous rock songs about relationships that herald back a few decades and arrangements of traditional Irish pieces (including one arranged and produced by Portman herself) heard at the actual dance sequence. Mixed in between these songs are the score tracks, and because these bits and pieces of material are so short, they are sometimes easy to miss. What you get is still rewarding, however, so long as you don't expect too much from it. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Rachel Portman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 28 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23 (in 25,299 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.