Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #632
Written 4/29/03, Revised 3/26/09
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Buy it... if you, like many in your generation, hold the film dear to your
heart and fondly remember Mark Knopfler's romantic acoustic guitar music in its
dreamy environment.
Avoid it... if you, like many others in your generation, hold the film with
extreme disdain and remember Knopfler's shallow synthetic action music to be
extremely obnoxious in its campy environment.
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| Knopfler |
The Princess Bride: (Mark Knopfler) For an entire generation
of teens and pre-teens, The Princess Bride was the ultimate slumber party
flick. Seen countless times by anyone in that age bracket during the late 1980's,
the Rob Reiner film lives on in the history of motion pictures as one of the
wackiest and most potentially mind-numbing success stories in the romantic comedy
genre. With a decent cast, the film wasn't ashamed of its own campy low-budget
feel, catering to teen logic and leaving parents shaking their heads and
searching for something more intelligent with which to distract themselves.
Several lines from the film, with the endlessly repeating "You killed my father;
prepare to die..." quote leading the pack, would be imitated by comedians for
several years to follow. A haphazard methodology of shifting between the fairy
tale and its contemporary storytelling environment was a distinct reason for the
film's uniqueness. As the generation that appreciated it the most grew up,
however, the film lost some of its pop culture appeal, and while it served its
film well at the time, the same can be said of the score for The Princess
Bride. Reiner (who defined the film as an "oddball") recognized immediately
that the story was ridiculous and hearty enough to require a musical departure
from the norm. Having enjoyed Mark Knopfler's scores for Dire Straits and
Local Hero, Reiner claims that he was his only choice for the assignment
for The Princess Bride. Known for his electronic and guitar-dominated
works, Knopfler's music would be a perfect fit for the project, infusing a
younger sounding, synthesized warmth to a similarly directed film. Little did
Knopfler know at the time that The Princess Bride would end up being his
best known composition for a film, the career defining piece that young girls
everywhere would snatch up and sing along to (for two decades, surprisingly). The
reception for The Princess Bride from the established film score community
was one more of distant amusement than anything else, though that stands as
testimony to the target audience of the film rather than the personality of the
score. Knopfler's style, across all of his film scores, is such a distinctive
extension of the instrumental backing of his pop songs that it's nearly
impossible to compare it to any other film score, despite the fact that a handful
have attempted to imitate it through the years.
The reason for the distance between traditional film score
collectors and Knopfler's
The Princess Bride is the same as their reason
for laughing off the film when they still saw it on the shelves of video rental
stores years later. The music is such a dedicated slice taken right from the
center of the corny
Princess Bride cake that you can't help but remember
the ridiculous circumstances of the film (and the age at which you saw it).
Performed by only two individuals (Knopfler and Guy Fletcher), the score won't
blow you away with sonic depth. Instead, it steals your heart with two opening
cues of sweet and romantic acoustic guitar performances. These delicately plucked
cues are quite lovely, with the kind of friendly personality that renders them a
regular accompaniment to wedding receptions. The wishy-washy, echoing recording
of the guitar, with its soothing synthesized accompaniment, appropriately puts
the listener into almost a dreamy state in these two cues (as well as "A Happy
Ending"). The same phenomenon occurs with the airy keyboarding in "Morning Ride",
"Friend's Song," and "Guide my Sword," which often overwhelm the soundscape with
their gleaming, major-key goodness. It is film score easy listening at its
easiest during much of its length. Unfortunately, the album is broken up by a
handful of unlistenable cues for action scenes, including "Cliffs of Insanity,"
"Rodents of Unusual Size," and "Revenge." The "Florin Dance" is another
extremely difficult experience. These troubles arise mostly because the electronics
couldn't produce varied or powerful enough action music without exposing the
silly and dumb tones that often defined orchestral samples of the era. Because
they are so incredibly cheap to the ears of anyone who has heard far more capable
synthetic imitations since then, such cues can easily get on the nerves of the
album's listener. Nevertheless, the album still contains at least twenty minutes
of highly enjoyable, soft romance material, and it is capped off by a song
rendition of Knopfler's title theme performed with a laid back style by Willy
DeVille. The album is readily in print even though it was a very early Warner
Brothers CD venture (with all the usual warnings about how to correctly place
your CD back into its case), and it remains a strong seller even after twenty
years. Overall,
The Princess Bride is an important piece of late-80's film
music history, albeit for just the younger generation, but anyone who still has a
piece of that kid at heart could easily find enjoyment in this album.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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