Buy it... if Rachel Portman's faster, quirky comedy rhythms make you want to get up and dance, even if they're highly redundant and, other than a wild kazoo section, offer nothing structurally new to her career.

Avoid it... if you are easily offended by spoken discussion of masturbation and bowel movements mixed directly on top of an otherwise sweet Portman score of actively humorous propulsion.

Portman

The Road to Wellville: (Rachel Portman) "Here at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the spirits soar, the mind is educated, and bowels... the bowels are born again!" Saturated with quotes like that, it's not hard to imagine why the film The Road to Wellville attracted only a small, specific crowd in 1994. Directed by the talented and respected Alan Parker, the film featured a blockbuster cast, led by Anthony Hopkins as the deranged Kellogg cereal inventor in a spirited performance worthy of mention. His Sanitarium, meant to cleanse the body and put people of the 1920's into a condition of unnatural health, was highlighted by its extensive use of enemas and bizarre rituals to encourage immaculate bowels. The young Lightbody couple (Matthew Broderick and Bridget Fonda) visits the clinic of sorts for a vacation of healthy relaxation, though Mr. Lightbody finds himself in for much more than he bargained for (including the snatch of a soon-to-be corpse). The film is disgusting in every way possible, forcing its actors into scenes and discussions of feces, farts, fornication, masturbation, orifices, nudity, orgasms, chewing, and, of course, those dreaded 15 gallons of yogurt. So filthy the narrative is in its portrayal of carnal subject matter that many people may not view it as the black comedy it was meant to be. If lines like "With friends like you, who needs enemas?" doesn't bother you, though, then you may very well revel in the juvenile, yet classically presented humor of The Road to Wellville. Parker's composer for the project would have to be sick and perverted enough to capture the essence of the Sanitarium with a wacky and mechanically orchestral score. Kazoos would also be mandatory. The obvious choice, of course: Rachel Portman. What? The same woman who writes all that Academy Award-recognized sappy, sweet music for romance and drama films? Yes, indeed. Portman's accepting of this assignment said something about the scope of her humor, too. It's frightful to contemplate that this score and Only You were produced nearly back-to-back, and yet, her contribution to The Road to Wellville is just as notable as any other in her career.

It's strange to consider just how similar and how different this score is from the composer's best known body of work at the same time. Gone immediately are Portman's sweeping, gorgeous themes; if you're looking for another experience as hearty as Legend of Bagger Vance, you're definitely in the wrong place. Instead, she responds to the bizarre and sick nature of the film by allowing her usual rhythmic tendencies to become 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 addresses this scene, and thus the remainder of the film, 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 rigidly conveyed motifs and choppy, stacatto string performances. Humor abounds, though, with Portman's bassoons and tubas likely intentionally blowing out farts at each measure. 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 is this environment that she employs a bank of kazoos (in charged, Chicken Run-style) for the disturbingly gleeful inhabitants. The horse race mentality is helped along by additional percussion, making this score one of Portman's most propulsive efforts even if it doesn't explore any new territory in terms of instrumental diversity (outside of the kazoos, of course). Many of the variations on the primary rhythm are redundant; the first three score tracks simply rotate the instrument carrying the overlying treble motif above that momentum. In "Wellville," at least the rhythm starts slowly and achieves galloping speed after the first thirty seconds yield to another mind-numbing kazoo sequence. A faintly romantic string theme is whimsically conveyed in "The San Waltz" and at the end of "Wellville," offering a shallow connection to Only You. It's all overblown, preposterous, and ridiculous, and when you consider that in the context of Portman career styles, her score for The Road to Wellville is pleasantly perverted.

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The film does contain a considerable amount of string quartet and vocalized source material, some of which incredibly obnoxious. The most important piece, "Where the Spirits Soar," was provided for the film by Alan Parker's son, Jake, and several classical pieces were thrown in to set the proper time frame. In the end, however, the most lasting impression is left by Portman's actively playful score. The album is an equally unique entry in the history of the Varèse Sarabande, one that you'll find veteran employees of the label hesitant to discuss openly. In all of its storied past, Varèse has never put out an album quite like The Road to Wellville, and it's easy to wonder if longtime executive producer Robert Townson was in his right mind when the project was conceived. From the longevity of the still in-print album's performance on the charts (anything in the top 30,000 selling albums worldwide after over a decade constitutes a strong product for the label), Townson apparently knew what he was doing. He pressed half an hour of music with over twenty quotes from the film bracketing each track. Today, the album would perhaps require a warning due to its vulgarity, 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 highly 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 album's overall mix of edits is incredibly 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 opening and closing of each cue, 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 watch 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 a major embarrassment in their lists of endeavors or a breath of fresh air, depending on your musical sense of humor. And you'll never think of yogurt the same way again.   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Score as Written for the Film: ****
Score as Heard on Album: **
Overall: ***

Bias Check:

For Rachel Portman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26 (in 28 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.23 (in 25,299 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.