Buy it... if you can't get enough of Jerry Goldsmith's sentimental themes for suburban innocence, in which case this neatly packaged collection of familiar ideas will please you with its summary of the composer's early 1990's comedy norms.

Avoid it... if you are expecting to hear the horror source material heard in the story's "film within a film" or are only a casual Goldsmith enthusiast with no interest in the composer's more redundant comedy entries.

Goldsmith

Matinee: (Jerry Goldsmith) Arguably one of director Joe Dante most notable flops, Matinee is a 1993 comedy that accomplished several of his personal interests. It's a "coming of age" picture for a group of pre-teen youth, it pokes fun at the B-rate horror film industry of the 1950's and early 1960's, and it plays on the fears of nuclear proliferation that were at their height in October 1962, the time frame of movie's setting. While the group of young actors is more than sufficient in their roles, it's John Goodman who steals the film as showman Lawrence Woolsey, a character based upon the real-life horror movie experimenter William Castle. Attempting to capitalize on nuclear fears and bring the third dimension of film back to theatres, Woolsey debuts a "movie within a movie" called "Mant" (featuring, as you would expect, a creature that is half man, half ant) and includes drama with a live "mant" inside the theatre itself at the showing. With nostalgia and sentiment at heart, the comedy of the film is an extra bonus. With that in mind, composer Jerry Goldsmith provides a score that is appropriately light-hearted but not as strictly comedic as you might first imagine. With the collaboration between Dante and Goldsmith spanning several decades and including many successful titles, it's easy for Matinee to slip through the cracks, though the score has managed to remain a favorite amongst the composer's fans. An important distinction to make in this soundtrack is between the music you hear in "Mant" and that which Goldsmith wrote for the original character drama. The old horror music applied as source is reused material from actual films of the era and genre, and only in the context of a cue like "Showtime" does Goldsmith play with some of that outwardly Bernard Hermann-inspired knock-off style in his own material. While the "Mant" music may, for some listeners, be the more memorable cue-by-cue material in the soundtrack (the "Mant" film is, after all, quite funny), none of that music exists within Goldsmith's contribution and is thus absent from the album. Alone, Goldsmith's writing for Matinee sounds much like the lesser-inspired moments of The 'Burbs from several years earlier, pulling also from the procedures of composer's equivalent contemporary dramas and comedies of 1992 and 1993.

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In regards to the familiarity of nearly everything heard in Matinee, the score is far less entertaining in a comedy or action sense than other Dante/Goldsmith pairings spanning from Gremlins to Looney Tunes: Back in Action (nine films total by the composer's death). Goldsmith's themes follow the route of sentimentality and nostalgia far more than comedy, with the first half of the score containing little excitement beyond the consistency of the composer's delightful, soft melodies for woodwinds. The themes Goldsmith concocts for these films are very similar, with Love Field, Rudy, and Angie all coming to mind, though in the case of Matinee, his customary electronics typically setting the pace in such circumstances are mostly absent. Relying instead on the slur of a Henry Mancini-era jazz theme and occasional string theme borrowings straight from the style of Moon River as well, Matinee is an instrumentally conservative score. His identity for the kids is typical lightweight fare for strings and woodwinds, though the ideas for the theatre owner are far more intriguing. For Goodman's character, Goldsmith inserts some sleazy jazz on piano, making for some greasy moments at its start (complete with carnival pipes at one point) but some outwardly elegant ones as the show goes on in later cues. An attractive theme for suburbia takes a page from The 'Burbs with its chipper melody over pulsating brass and plucking bass strings. The quantity of melodies for Matinee is surprisingly deep, with the final cue, "The Next Attraction," combining all of the thematic ideas into one strong 8-minute cue (ending with a cute whistling sound effect from Goldsmith's library), including an expansion of the faster, rhythmic percussion-driven piano cues that finally provide a small taste of that Gremlins attitude. The latter half of Matinee provides a much more varied and interesting listening experience than the first, thematically conservative half, including some Basic Instinct and Forever Young shades in "This is It." If you could throw the short blasts of B-rate horror music in "Showtime" someplace in the vast end credits cue, you have all the music from Matinee that you really need. The album is among those plentiful Varèse Sarabande releases of Goldsmith's new music in the early 1990's that is too short for the most avid collectors but at least has remained available at decent prices for decades. At the very least, it's a reliable survey of the composer's comedic tendencies from the era. ***   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 113 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.32 (in 133,462 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.