Buy it... only if you are a die-hard collector of Rachel Portman's light-hearted, fluffy romance works.

Avoid it... if you expect nothing less than the quality of Only You and Addicted to Love in your Portman comedies.

Portman

Emma: (Rachel Portman) The early 1990's saw a rebirth of adaptations of famous British authors of centuries ago, and none was perhaps as influential on screen as Jane Austen. Following Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, and the massive A&E production of Pride and Prejudice, the success of Emma should come as no surprise. Even Alicia Silverstone's Clueless the previous year was a modern adaptation of Austen's "Emma" story, though it doesn't take a genius to know the intended audience of the true adaptations. Austen stories all have the same general idea: several marriages have to be arranged by the end, the leading lady is stubborn and dislikes social conventions, there's ballroom dancing to be done, and the main couple of interest takes the entire story to finally admit their love to one another. For non-Austen fans, these scenarios are just one alien invasion short of a successful story, and unfortunately for those non-romantic folks, the scores for these films aren't much better. Even within the genre, it seems that he music for these pictures can head in one of two directions: they can use modern orchestral sensibilities without references to period music, or they can rely heavily on classical quotations or imitations to try to best capture the music that would have been heard at the time. Whether it is Carl Davis or Dario Marianelli, it seems that Pride and Prejudice has tended to sway towards the latter. But Patrick Doyle and Rachel Portman approached the task differently, and Portman in particular was forced into a more comedic writing role because Emma remains one of Austen's more flighty and whimsical escapes. The project would be an easy assignment for Portman, whose writing is often most effective when accompanying pure fluff on the screen. Her string and woodwind-dominated ensembles often define the light romance genre.

	Learn about supporting Filmtracks

With the score for Emma, we get absolutely nothing unexpected. You either have to be a Portman fan or an Austen fan to enjoy this delicately prancing period romance music. The score is built over Portman's trademark bed of lightly chopping strings, with the heavier moments utilizing cellos and the comedy cues switching to violins. The melody lines are carried as usual by clarinet and oboe, mixed adequately at the forefront. Such usage is not atypical for Portman, but what usually floats her scores are the lush performances of lyrical passages by the entire ensemble, and while Emma hints at the kind of majesty heard in Only You and The Cider House Rules, that crescendo of beauty is never really obtained. In "Proposal," the ensemble almost achieves this magnificence, but Portman restrains herself (maybe unnecessarily) and without fail, the cue returns to the softer churnings of the strings under solo woodwind. Portman alternates between two primary themes; the first contains the title sequences and represents the main character, and the second often punctuates the comedy of the story. The first theme becomes burdensome by the end of the score, repeated endlessly in Portman's consistent woodwind performances. The comedy theme is, as to be expected, the more vibrant and demanding of the ensemble, allowing the rhythms to perk up and bounce in "Celery Root" and in the first half of "End Titles." As heard in Addicted to Love after Emma, Portman's humorous writing carries the interest of the listener far better than her all-too-similar love themes (you could even extend that statement to The Road to Wellville if you like). The 4-minute end title cue in Emma contains all the material you will need from the score (a lively dance cue in the middle is not her original material), though her effort was still strong enough to garner her an Academy Award in the resurrected "Best Comedy Score" category in 1997. Even Portman collectors will agree, however, that Emma is far from her best work, and by no means deserved an Oscar over her other, stronger romance scores. ***   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.