Buy it... on the very brief promotional album only if you specifically noted the impact of John Debney's sleazy parody score in the film.

Avoid it... if you expect to hear a really balanced representation of the music heard in the film, which would require both the promo and the commercial song album to satisfyingly recreate.

Debney

Dick: (John Debney) With a significant chunk of the acting crew from "Saturday Night Live" in tow, Dick is a childish attempt to bring political satire about one of America's darkest White House chapters down to the level of dumb, skit-like jokes. It proposes that two young women with about half a brain between them became embroiled in the Watergate scandal through an accidental association with Richard Nixon, a premise that has intriguing possibilities but never really goes anywhere. The entire production is a tongue-in-cheek laugh about the events, with so little respect paid to actual history that the film doesn't work on any level. As usual for this kind of picture, Dick utilizes a broad selection of disco and rock songs from the era, largely upstaging composer John Debney's score for the film. His minimal contribution, however, is not without its influence, for Debney very well extends the spirit that the film was attempting to convey and writes music that merges well with the collection of songs. For the composer, this project came sandwiched in between the mainstream efforts of Inspector Gadget and End of Days, destined to be forgotten if not for a short promotional release pressed by Debney's representatives. The composer stated that his inspirations for Dick were the crime capers of the 1960's and 70's, including "The Pink Panther" and "The Man from UNCLE." The European jazz (of faux-sophistication here) takes pages from the careers of Francis Lai, Henry Mancini, and Michel Legrand. The environment of the smoky lounge is a perfect representation for Nixon and his administration; not only were they crooks, but they were sleazy slimeballs, too, which Debney very astutely addresses with the tone of his music. There is parody at hand as well, another concept at which Debney is well skilled. It's not really the kind of listening experience that anyone will be clamoring for, but the score does serve to further expose Debney's talents and sense of humor for a project that obvious was much fun for which to contribute.

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Whether or not the score actually is a good representation of the character of the Nixon administration, it nails the sleaze element. The main theme of Debney's score is introduced in the "la-la" vocals of Francis Lai origin in "Skipping Through Town," a piece that takes Randy Newman's Pleasantville interpretation and infuses it will all the wit it can take. A straight reprise of this cue is provided at the end of the promotional album. The latter half of this cue offers solo female vocals performing the swinging theme for the Arlene character, an idea that follows her in more sullen variations in "Dreams of Dick" and "Arlene is Heartbroken." A theme of suspense is conveyed immediately in "Watergate Break-In" and extends to "Lip Gloss Intrigue," "Girls See Liddy," and others. This light rhythmic idea combines the rattling and tapping of the "Mission: Impossible" theme by Lalo Schifrin with the bass progressions of Monty Norman's theme for James Bond, though Debney does an adequate job of just barely altering (if not partially quoting) both ideas. The carefree and innocent attitude of the performances of the jazz is the highlight of the score, including the snazzy "Lounge-y Dick" and the layered, wordless vocals spread throughout. Among the distinctly unique cues on the promo are "High School Band," which gives the usual, sparse march (in the spirit of Debney's Little Giants) a strangely Mexican tilt, and "I Honestly Love You," in which Michelle Williams (as Arlene) sings a portion of the Olivia Newton-John song into Nixon's tape recorder and thus causes the famous missing segment of the Watergate Tapes. The promo only includes twenty-four minutes of non-vocal, non-reprise music. Released a few weeks after the normal song compilation album for Dick, the promo doesn't really have enough substance to merit its existence for enjoyment purposes. Its recording quality, however, is quite strong. For Debney fans, there's really no purpose in seeking this promo over ones for Inspector Gadget and My Favorite Martian from the same year, both of which better represent the composer's mainstream style. If the Dick promo were to be combined with the contents of the song album, the resulting product would ironically have been a far better. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Debney reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.23 (in 49 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.01 (in 42,775 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.