Buy it... if you'd be refreshed by hearing Brian Tyler branch out from the horror genre and provide a conservative, pastoral score for lush orchestra.

Avoid it... if a less refined variation of Legends of the Fall is not your idea of yet another Americana interpretation.

Tyler

The Greatest Game Ever Played: (Brian Tyler) Not everyone thinks of a round of golf as the greatest game ever played, including George Carlin, who famously called for all the American golf courses (and cemeteries, of course) to be churned up and used for affordable, low cost housing. The participants of the also famous 1913 U.S. Open golf championship would hardly agree, for it is that sole event that occupies the entire story of Bill Paxton's The Greatest Game Ever Played. There couldn't be a further departure for Paxton from his last (and first) film, Frailty, with The Greatest Game Ever Played serving a very familiar process of presenting a feel-good sports story with a touch of history, romance, and, of course, the obligatory underdog plot. True to historical record, Francis Ouimet was an underpriviledged American amateur with a 10-year-old caddy who defeated renown British player Harry Vardon in the U.S. Open in 1913. Vardon is a likable character, having grown up in similar circumstances, and the only villain of the story is a newspaper owner and underwriter of the British golf team who pressures the older player to win. The Disney film is anonymous in its lack of star power, and since this basic type of story has been put on screen so many times, Paxton has had to rely on new methods of telling the story to distinguish itself over others (such as giving us shots from the perspective of the golf club and inevitably the ball). The problem with this scenario is that the telling of the story has to be really good to survive the competition from the dozens of rival films, and for the most part, The Greatest Game Ever Played received bland reviews and hooked it right out of the cinemas. A few years back, the score for The Legend of Bagger Vance by Rachel Portman passed much like the film, with similar anonymity problems as this new venture. But Portman's "love it or hate it" score has become an extremely hot item on the collector's market since its label was going out of business at print time. Paxton would reunite with horror score veteran Brian Tyler to try to capture some of the same Bagger Vance magic.

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The interesting thing about Tyler's score for The Greatest Game Ever Played is that it competes in the same film and score genre as John Debney's Dreamer at about the same time, and both scores are fascinating studies in how the temp music for a film in production can affect the final composition. Whereas the veteran Debney avoids nearly all the pitfalls of the temp score phenomena, Tyler falls badly into those pitfalls in a few of his major thematic ideas for the film. Score collectors will immediately recognize the same structure and orchestration from James Horner's Legends of the Fall in Tyler's overture, as his attempt to score the Americana aspect of the story largely backfires on him. The lush, layered strings combined with an all-too-familiar theme doom this identity from the start, as does the rather stale performance by the Los Angeles musicians. A secondary theme has similarities to the score for Dust to Glory by newcomer Nathan Furst earlier in the year (another sports documentary), which is ironic because that score itself was a lesson in temp music pitfalls. The great sadness involving The Greatest Game Ever Played is that Tyler's underscore outside of the title themes is often very strong, incorporating a competitive spirit in lively rhythms that raises memories of his pinnacle Children of Dune work. These appealing rhythms use light drums, ethnic flutes, acoustic guitars, and chopping strings to inject much-needed life into a score that plays much longer than its 50 minutes on album. Cues such as "Determination," "A Call to Arms," and "Rain Battle" offer a spirited sense of competition that is diluted by the lengthy cues of solo piano interpretations of the title themes. The two performances of "Ride the High Country" (the theme, not the film) have a snare-driven, Western style that also plays better to the spirit of the film, leaving listeners wondering why Tyler (or the filmmakers) were hopelessly attracted to the rehash of Legends of the Fall for the "feel-good" drama of the tale. In the end, there are many similarities between The Greatest Game Ever Played and Dreamer, but Debney has a slightly more refined package. The Tyler score is a pleasant listen from start to end, with consistency as perhaps one of its awkward faults, and yet it's still refreshing to hear Tyler branch out from the horror genre that has defined his career to date. If only the spirit of the end titles replaced the overused drama in the opening titles, The Greatest Game Ever Played would be better able to stand on its own. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.24 (in 22 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.11 (in 12,201 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.