Buy it... only if you enjoyed the particular collection of classic Italian-flavored songs heard in the film.

Avoid it... if you expect blazing brilliance from more than two of Basil Poledouris' eight minutes of material on the album.

Poledouris

Mickey Blue Eyes: (Basil Poledouris/Wolfgang Hammerschmid) With The Sopranos making waves on television and Analyze This showing that there was indeed a market for comedies involving mobsters, Mickey Blue Eyes was conceived as a loveable, romantic counterpart to the same popular theme. Unfortunately for Mickey Blue Eyes, its cast was a dismal failure pretty much across the board; any time critics identify Hugh Grant as the strongest performance in a film like this, you know you're in trouble. Essentially, the story involves the bumbling Grant as an New York auctioneer who proposes marriage to Jeanne Tripplehorn's school-teaching character. Unfortunately, she declines because her father is the screen face of Sonny Corleone and she doesn't want the likeable Briton to become involved with the business. Perseverance leads to a tug of war between the three characters, and Grant inevitably is asked to provide his best Italian tough guy accent. The film failed to live up to expectations despite having a funny concept, and it never generated the same buzz as the other mafia-related projects at the time. In terms of its music, the film's producers were perpetually obsessed with battles over which song to use where, digging up so many songs they wanted to use that they couldn't fit them all into the picture. Still, when you watch Mickey Blue Eyes, the songs are really all that stand out. In fact, it's one of those films where you really don't notice a score at all, for most of the original music contained in the film could be easily mistaken for source music from some other place. In both the song selection and the limited amount of score employed for the film, the one overriding factor that becomes clear immediately is that everything about the music was meant to be overdone. The songs used are defined best by the flamboyant "Mambo Italiano," performed famously by Rosemary Clooney, with each succeeding entry painting an even more obvious picture of pop Italian culture of yesteryear. As a collection of songs, the album by Milan is lineup of Dean Martin and Louis Prima beltings that served as the clear selling points of the product.

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And what of the score? Well, the producers must have considered it an afterthought, for its role is so diminished and fragmented that it doesn't have much impact on the film. The amazing thing about this is the involvement of veteran composer Basil Poledouris as the primary composer on the project. After almost a year's absence, Poledouris graces Mickey Blue Eyes with a pretty, but completely inconsequential score. His contributions on album constitute only eight and a half minutes, and only one of his cues actually makes an impact on the film. The rambling grand piano elegance of "Gina Runs from Ambulance" is a gorgeous excerpt of what you'd probably have heard Poledouris play in his own home, backed by a moderate orchestral ensemble of strings, brass, and sparse percussion. Solo woodwinds interject when Poledouris' title theme --yes, there actually is one-- offers the stereotypical Italian flavor. For such little running time, and with the ill-fateness of Poledouris' final years of production, you can't help but smile and appreciate the uniqueness of a track like "Truckers on Time" in his career. Of course it's dumb and stereotypical, but its merging of Il Postino and Only You is nevertheless a guilty pleasure. His oboe and accordion theme is a lightweight to be sure, and his more dramatic "Gina Runs from Ambulance" is the only true compilation piece. German newcomer Wolfgang Hammerschmid was brought in primarily for the last few major scenes requiring score, with the circumstances of Poledouris' departure unknown, but possibly due to illness. Hammerschmid's music has a much more robust recording quality, with the larger ensemble handling the one action cue and the wedding reception and waltz music. Some listeners have noted that Hammerschmid's contribution is actually more impressive than Poledouris', and in a technical sense that's true. Hammerschmid is responsible for the wretched source music from the Chinese restaurant proposal scene, however, a piece unfortunately tacked onto the end of the album as a bonus track. Overall, unless you're a fan of the genre of songs included on the album, there's little for score fans to use as justification to purchase the product. Only Poledouris' lovely two-minute "Gina Runs from Ambulance" cue deserves your attention. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Basil Poledouris reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.47 (in 33 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.27 (in 32,977 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.