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Dad: (James Horner) A story about the self-discovery of
an average, modern American family,
Dad is another lesson on how to
and how not to take care of your parents once they reach the age of
senility. A busy banker in the big city is forced to take leave to attend to
his ailing parents and the "coming together" experience helps heal years of
distant relationships and the story shows the audience about how older folks
can learn to cope with their illnesses and other age-related problems. The
film dances between the realms of drama and comedy, perhaps to a fault that
it cannot recover from. Written and directed by Gary David Goldberg,
Dad would be his first feature film after years of directing TV's
"Family Ties" show. Critical reaction to
Dad jumped on this
inexperience and often related the problems with the film to the problems
typical to sitcom comedies. All of the actors in the film would go on to
better representations of their characters in subsequent films (especially
Jack Lemmon in the
Grumpy Old Men movies), and the same could
arguably be said for composer James Horner as well. Best known for his
adventure and high drama scores in the 1980's, both
An American Tail
and
The Land Before Time would prepare Horner for these kind of
syrupy human drama pictures that we would become associated with over the
rest of his career. His association with Steven Spielberg's Amblin
Entertainment would come to play in
Dad, and would lead to several
similarly curious Horner projects in the following few years. Of his human
drama efforts,
Dad remains one of the more personable and enjoyable
works, building a consistently easy-going listening experience around the
foundation of one of Horner's very typical children's themes of the era.
While
Dad isn't exactly a children's film, Horner handles it as such
with the sensibilities of his light touch and friendly instrumentation.
Horner collectors familiar with
Searching for Bobby
Fischer and
To Gillian on her 37th Birthday will recognize the
scope of
Dad immediately. While those other scores lay on the drama
more heavily during their thematic performances,
Dad remains in a
more contemporary style. Horner's title theme is a merging of
An American
Tale ("Somewhere Out There" lives again!) and
The Land Before
Time, following usual chord progressions and alternating between
performances of sweetness in strings and woodwinds that will remind
listeners of Jerry Goldsmith's innocent themes of the years to come. In the
opening tracks, as well as "Dad," Horner's title theme is accompanied by
light rock elements, and in the latter track, Jay Gruska's arrangement of
Horner's material allows the sax to carry the tune to much of the same
degree as Goldsmith's
Forever Young. Later in the score, this theme
takes on a more strictly orchestral personality, culminating a "Goodbyes"
cue that mirrors
The Land Before Time in its string usage. The
opening bars of "Taking Dad Home" feature perhaps the most explosive
outburst of emotion, as heard during a pivotal sequence in the film during
which Lemmon's character is literally carried out a hospital by his son (Ted
Danson) with Hollywood flair (a moment that ruined the film for some
critics, it might be added). The consistency of thematic variations makes
Dad an easy and nearly uninterrupted experience. The one exception is
"Mopping the Floor," Horner's lone comedy cue from the film, for which he
switches to a wild bluegrass/jazz rhythm performed by bass string and steel
drums with a catchy violin theme over the top. While some listeners might be
turned off by this significant departure from the nonstop charm of the rest
of the score, it is another one of those curious moments in Horner's career
that you almost wish the composer would explore to a greater degree at some
point (
Field of Dreams the same year would also have a cue or two of
this kind of material). Among Horner's more subtle work,
Dad stands
up to nearly the level of
The Spitfire Grill in its ability to
involve the listener with just enough substance while maintaining an
appropriate restraint. It is at the opposite end off the scale from
something like
Class Action, which suffers from a striking lack of
personality compared to
Dad. This badly out of print album (with
difficult to read packaging design) will be a welcome addition to any Horner
collection.
****
| Bias Check: | For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.12 (in 89 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.34
(in 158,769 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
