Buy it... only if you are the world's most absolute, #1 John Debney fan and have no other goal in life than to collect all of his promotional releases.

Avoid it... if Debney's competent, but anonymous and predictable writing for light comedies and romances borders on being frustratingly pointless for you.

Debney

Lost and Found: (John Debney) With studio inspiration from There's Something About Mary and the requirement that audiences actually believe that David Spade could play a romantic lead in a somewhat responsible role, it's hard to imagine who on earth thought Lost and Found would be a success. It was thankfully a flop for Warner Brothers, proving that the truly terrible script should have been nailed to a cross and displayed outside the studio to discourage others from submitting or accepting similar trash. The premise of the plot involves Spade as a restaurant owner (with completely unrealistic behavior for the role) who lives in an apartment complex where old ladies play strip poker. He falls in love with a neighboring, French cellist --what was Sophie Marceau thinking?-- and decides to win her affections by stealing her adorable little dog and letting the woman panic just long enough before returning it to her and playing the role of hero. Yeah, what a dick. Time for Marceau to slip again into the roll of Bond villain and cut off his testicles. But alas, the film actually took itself seriously, and to that end it was mocked and ridiculed into obscurity. It is precisely this kind of questionable, cliched film that composer John Debney has made a career out of scoring. His start to 1999 was all the evidence necessary to prove that point, writing music for My Favorite Martian, Inspector Gadget, Lost and Found, and Dick all within a few months. He would salvage his year by beginning his transition to major action and horror scores with End of Days in the last month of 1999. His music for Lost and Found would be a middle-of-the-road entry in the year, playing it much safer than any of the aforementioned scores. It's because of this total anonymity that Debney's succeeds so well in the industry, just pumping out these mundane scores, and Lost and Found is as predictable as they come.

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If you've heard enough John Debney light comedy, animation, or romance music, from his early ventures all the way through The Ant Bully in 2006, you clearly know that these scores all sound alike after a while. While never truly effortless, Debney seems to be able to walk into a recording studio a few weeks after receiving an assignment and record competent music without breaking a sweat. One has to wonder what he thinks about all of these terrible films he has to watch in order to write music for them. The only thing you can do with a score like Lost and Found is determine if there's anything... any tiny snippet of unique character, theme, or instrumentation to separate it from the mass of similar work from the composer. In the case of the concurrent My Favorite Martian and Inspector Gadget, Debney managed to do that and create music that you might actually be able to remember the next day. With Lost and Found there is absolutely nothing --not a single minute of music-- that you will recall clearly even five minutes after you finish hearing the score in its entirety. It is the absolute definition of auto-pilot Debney filler material. A light orchestra prances through delightfully fluffy themes with some of the woodwind and chopping string spunk of Rachel Portman music. The pace picks up with more pronounced string rhythms over light snare taps for scenes with the dog, and a piano and solo woodwind provide soft and pleasant themes for the moments of romantic interaction. Lost and Found does indeed have a collection of motifs, but they are so generic and predictable in Debney's style of anonymous production that there's nothing remarkable about them to mention. As a listening experience, Lost and Found is a very pleasing and easy score, never challenging, never loud, and never unconventional in instrumentation. It was only released as a 26-minute promotional item by Debney himself, as were most of his scores at the time, though a case could easily be made that the score doesn't deserve even that. Despite having no flaws, it seems frustratingly pointless. ***   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.