Buy it... if you typically relax to John Barry's soothing, thematically simplistic compositions for strings and woodwinds in the 1990's.

Avoid it... if Barry's other early 1990's dramas tend to put you into a funk of boredom and restlessness.

Barry

My Life: (John Barry) If anyone doubted filmmaker Bruce Joel Rubin's obsession with death after he wrote and directed Ghost and Jacob's Ladder, then 1993's My Life would clear away that remaining doubt. It's the ultimate tearjerker for the unashamed sniveler in the audience, the kind of film you expect to wrestle with your emotions as a parent (or aspiring parent). In My Life, Michael Keaton's successful executive character receives good news in that his wife, played by Nicole Kidman, is pregnant with their first child. He also learns that cancer will claim his life in four months, leaving him with the idea of videotaping several hours of material to help teach his unborn son how to someday do things like shave and use jumper cables on a car. Subplots involve reconciliation with his estranged parents and jabs at exploring spirituality. The film didn't stir critics and audiences as well as expected, however, and the "love it or hate it" response to story's outward attempts to manipulate your emotions doomed it for the mainstream. In other words, major downers are a bummer! Nearing the end of his productive career, composer John Barry was still at the height of his popularity in 1993, however, still enjoying popular recognition from Dances with Wolves and critical recognition for Chaplin in 1992. A widely debated fault of Barry's later scores involved his inability to expand his scores' sound outside of his trademark lush tones established in the 1980's, and while that stubborn continuation of style would not suit many of the projects that would come after it, My Life was a perfect fit for Barry's equally melodramatic and romantic touch. In theme and orchestral sensibility, there really is no difference between My Life and Chaplin, and many parts of My Life will remind listeners, especially in thematic structure, of Barry's two dramatic 1995 scores, The Scarlet Letter and Cry, The Beloved Country.

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Three themes delicately grace My Life, including the usual light romantic affair for layered strings over the titles. Its simple harmonies and predictable progressions will either relax or bore you, depending, as usual, on your predisposition towards these kinds of Barry scores. A secondary theme on piano serves as a "love theme" for the wife of the terminally ill father, though Barry intermingles this theme so often with the primary string theme that it's more of an interlude within the larger title theme. A third theme, or more of a motif, is inserted to represent the more hopeful, innocent side of parenthood, and it is this element that gives My Life its sole unique element. For these playful, comedic scenes, Barry utilizes a light synthetic pipe organ and gentle snare rhythm to add a spark of life to the score. While the cues that include this instrumentation and rhythm were primarily meant to represent the backyard circus environment seen in the picture, the slight hope that this rhythm gives to the score also happens to save the listening experience from a certain amount of monotony. The cue "Child's Play" presents a brief splash of jazz with the tambourine and piano, and provides the same relief to this score that the "The Roll Dance" cues served in Chaplin. Only one cue of significant power exists in My Life, with a more thunderous percussion use under a brass subtheme in "The Roller Coaster." Outside of these few exceptions, the score is a love affair with the string and woodwind sections. Solo flute performances are as entertaining in My Life as they would be in Cry, The Beloved Country. Both the woodwinds and the synthetic rhythms (including the light metallic percussion that comes with the synths) benefit greatly from Barry's usual crisp sound quality. As is true with most of Barry's lush scores through the years, a generous mix between wet atmosphere and accentuated solos aids the score's soothing effect. Barry slows his themes and even staggers them in fragments as Keaton's character begins to lose motor control of his own body, a subtle but noteworthy technique in later cues. Overall, you can easily predict whether you'll enjoy this typical Barry drama depending on your opinion of his dozen other similar scores from the era. Expect nothing more and nothing less. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For John Barry reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.85 (in 27 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.52 (in 24,822 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.