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Mom and Dad Save the World: (Jerry Goldsmith) Both
composers Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner went through a "phase" of sorts
in the early 1990's during which they seemed to enjoy brainless comedy
assignments despite little involvement in the genre during the prior decade.
Most of the comedies had some basic redeeming quality; in Horner's case, the
call was towards the children's genre more than straight comedy. For
Goldsmith, with the aid of director Joe Dante, the comedies tended to be
aimed more for adults, sometimes with disastrous results. In Hollywood at
the time, the straight-to-video market was being diverted in many cases to
big-screen releases, often allowing ridiculously awful films to suffer a
week in theatres before disappearing. One such entry was the following
Warner Brothers disaster that nearly got the ax several times in
pre-production, and obviously should have.
Mom and Dad Save the World
is a sci-fi spoof from Chris Matheson (the son of 50's sci-fi icon and Ray
Bradbury collaborator, Richard Matheson) and Ed Solomon, the pair of
deviants who wrote
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Directed by Greg
Beeman with cardboard sets and methodology that makes a bad attempt to mimic
the style of Mel Brooks (
Spaceballs is infinitely better than this),
Mom and Dad Save the World involves the Emperor of the planet Spengo,
Tod the Destroyer (Jon Lovitz), and his plot to destroy the Earth because of
its cocky populace. First, however, he spots unhappy housewife (Terri Garr)
and beams her and her husband in their station wagon to Spengo so that he
can make her his wife. The husband and wife combine forces with all sorts of
perverted creatures (not to mention a barely clothed Kathy Ireland and her
tribal cohorts) to overthrow the emperor. Along the way, they encounter
death rays, renegade bird men, a mind-melt machine, and, among others, a
puppet character in the shape of a penis. Or mushroom. No matter... Jerry
Goldsmith dove from the emotional trauma of scoring
Basic Instinct
into this mess and seems to have had a very enjoyable time doing so.
If you can imagine a combination of Goldsmith's own
Dennis the Menace and Jamshied Sharifi's
Muppets from Space,
then you begin to get an idea about both the scope and energy level of the
score for
Mom and Dad Save the World. The battle between the
piano-performed love theme and another "Baby Elephant Walk"-influenced theme
(which also seemingly inspired the wretched electric organ theme in
Goldsmith's
Mr. Baseball the same year) greets the listener in the
opening track, and that battle continues to the very last note of the score.
It would be interesting to know what exactly was going through Goldsmith's
head when wrote this utterly silly bombast... Was he trying to write a
slapstick comedy score for children? Something slightly darker, like
Gremlins 2? Or did he immediately recognize the terrible quality of
the picture and just say "ah, shucks" before unleashing his waves of random
pseudo-sci-fi cues? Despite a few healthy themes that repeat sporadically
throughout
Mom and Dad Save the World, there really isn't much
cohesiveness to the work. You have to enjoy the score cue-by-cue, whether
it's a loungey piano solo, and choral chant, or a brooding action piece.
Aside from a percussively outlandish and wincingly obnoxious "Rebel Dance"
cue, the majority of the score is listenable in a typically slapstick
manner. One advantage this score has is the crisp performance of the
National Philharmonic Orchestra, a group that seems to do the best justice
to Goldsmith's wilder, more imaginative scores. Be forewarned, however, that
if material like
Dennis the Menace or Goldsmith's final score,
Looney Tunes: Back in Action, test your patience, then the cute
marches, cliche jazz rolls, and stock orchestral fanfares here will serve no
purpose for you. As a whole,
Mom and Dad Save the World requires a
very specific, adventuresome mood from the listener, and even a great
majority of Goldsmith collectors will likely find too little new material in
it to warrant full listens. As a composition, however, the score offers
Goldsmith at his most playful --not necessary his most creative... this is
no
I.Q.-- but its prancing mayhem could very well drive you nuts if
you aren't ready for it.
**
| Bias Check: | For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.22 (in 111 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.36
(in 120,002 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
