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Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... if Rachel Portman's faster, quirky comedy rhythms make you want to get up and dance, regardless of dialogue over the end of each track. Avoid it... if you are easily offended by discussion of bowel movements during your sweet Portman score. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
What?? The same woman who writes all that sappy, sweet music for romance and drama films? Yes, indeed. Portman's accepting of the project says something about her, too. It's hard to imagine that this score and Only You were produced nearly back-to-back, and yet, her contribution to The Road to Wellville is just as important as any other. Gone immediately are Portman's sweeping, gorgeous themes; if you're looking for another Legend of Bagger Vance, you're definitely in the wrong place. She responded to the bizarre and sick nature of the film by getting completely silly. The opening titles of the film show Hopkins in a 1920's Bowflex-equivalent contraption, working out before his daily enema and swim. Portman responds with a woodwind and brass theme that bounces in a simple, yet powerful rhythm that accentuates the mechanical nature of the Sanitarium. In fact, everything about her score is slightly sterile and clinical in its straight motifs and choppy strings. Humor abounds, though, with Portman's tubas likely intentionally blowing out farts at every beat. Everything she does for the film is in the major key, turning this mechanized madness into a positive, giddy experience. After all, Kellogg convinces all of these Battle Creek visitors to subject themselves to hideous physical rigors willingly, and Portman thus captures their enthusiasm in her strangely upbeat rhythms. So jazzed up she is that she employs a bank of kazoos (Chicken Run-style) for the disturbingly gleeful in habitants. The horse race mentality is helped along by additional percussion, making this score one of Portman's most diverse efforts instrumentally. It's all overblown, preposterous, and ridiculous, and when you take that in the Portman context, her score for The Road to Wellville is pleasantly perverted.. Some additional period string music was provided for the film by Alan Parker's son Jake, and several classical pieces were thrown in to set the proper time. In the end, however, the best impression is left by Rachel Portman's actively playful score. The album is, well... a unique entry in the history of label Varèse Sarabande. In all of its storied past, Varèse Sarabande has never put out an album quite like The Road to Wellville, and it's easy to wonder if someone there in 1994 was in his or her right mind when the project was conceived. What they did was press half an hour of music with over twenty quotes from the film bracketing each track. Today, the album would perhaps require explicit lyrics warnings, with quotes like "an erection is a flagpole on your grave," "sex is the sewer drain of a healthy body... wasted seeds are wasted lives," and "I was not masturbating... I was massaging my colon!" Interestingly, the combination of Portman's score with the period music and quotes is amusing, as any fan of fart jokes would admit. The problem with the album is not the existence of quotes (if any deserves them, this one does, especially with its short playing time). Rather, the quality of the mixing is poor. The quotes exist at a much lower volume than the music, making them difficult to hear in between the tracks of music. Secondly, the quotes are placed right over the music, so if you're a Portman purist, you can't easily remove the music from the filthy topics of discussion. Thus, if you want to experience the music and quotes at their best, just rent the film and pray that your loved ones don't disown you. In both Portman's career and Varèse Sarabande's history, The Road to Wellville is a unique chapter. It's either the embarrassment of their endeavors or an immaculate breath of fresh air, depending on your musical sense of humor. And hey, you'll never think of yogurt the same way again.
Score as Heard on Album: ** Overall: ***
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