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Review of The American President (Marc Shaiman)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you seek one of the best scores that the romantic comedy genre has to offer, brilliantly balancing the humor of the film's story with the gravity of its location.

Avoid it... if you expect the respectfully restrained underscore in between the opening and closing statements of the title theme to be as strikingly robust.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

The American President: (Marc Shaiman) Rob Reiner's entertaining comedy is very much like the earlier Dave, a lighthearted love story involving a White House built in the kind of liberal fantasy world that causes conservatives to cry foul. In The American President, Michael Douglas is a single man as the current Hollywood dream in the Oval Office and, to the understandable curiosity of the press, he dates a Washington lobbyist played by Annette Bening. Their relationship, and how it helps the President regain his confidence and his poll ratings, is a fuzzy triumph accompanied by a plethora of cameo appearances by real-life politicians and pundits. The film is a regular on television re-runs, a safe romantic comedy for the family with an innocent style embodied perfectly by Marc Shaiman's orchestral underscore. Reiner identified Shaiman's challenge in providing a score that addressed both the political weight of the environment of the office while also "tastefully enhancing" the emotional elements of the humor and romance. Shaiman made a career in the 1990's out of such kinds of scores, with Patch Adams perhaps best emulating the same balancing act. His success with the style of The American President would earn him an Academy Award nomination (though he was denied the award in favor of the machine known as Alan Menken) and his title theme would exhibit so much respectful patriotism that it would be used in the trailers for Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan in early 1998. While Shaiman's score had vanished from the collective memory by then, its dramatic placement in those trailers resurrected interest in the score and has assisted in cementing its status as one of the best scores of its genre in the decade. The score both graces the film with a timeless sense of grandeur and is an outstanding, consistent listening experience on album. Harmonious for almost every minute of its length, The American President even has a slight touch of Western sensibility in the secondary passage of its title theme, aiding in the portrayal of somewhat maverick behavior for the character in the context of his office.

Shaiman's two primary themes for The American President are built with a lush performance in mind, led by strings and bold counterpoint by horns. The title theme, representing the office, is the more famous of the two, though the understated romance theme does the majority of the work in the central portions of the film. Shaiman doesn't restrain the title theme in any of its performances, highlighted by "Main Title" and the two concluding cues in the film and on album. Each performance seemingly enhances its presidential aura, leading to a final statement with rolling snare drum at the conclusion of "End Titles." This blatantly heroic character theme will likely be the attraction for most score collectors, though The American President excels in that the remainder of its contents are equally strong. The romance theme, often performed by piano or woodwinds, is a solid reinforcement of the film's flighty, positive spirit in cues from "The First Kiss" to "The Morning After," as well as several statements in the final twenty minutes. The theme is pretty standard in Shaiman's career (the title theme is, in fact, the one that goes above and beyond), but a relatively short album never allows these more subdued conversational cues to become boring. Another motif that appears twice in the score is the more serious bass-string rhythm that accompanies the politically procedural undertones of the story. This motif is mostly a tense rhythmic movement in "Gathering Votes," but takes a firmer stance with brass and snare in the impressive "Meet the Press." A lighter version of the rhythm in "Never Have an Airline Strike at Christmas" is an upbeat spin on this idea, leading to a source performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein's lounge-appropriate "I Have Dreamed." Overall, The American President is a score that doesn't reach out and grab your attention very often, but its consistent quality at the top of its genre, as well as a very good recording mix, make it a pleasure every time you revisit it. The final two tracks, totaling over twelve minutes, are worth the album's price alone. Shaiman's similar output in the following years would rarely capture the same enticing spirit.  ****

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 39:04

• 1. Main Titles (2:23) • 2. Call Me Andy (1:36) • 3. I Like Her (1:48) • 4. It's Meatloaf Night (0:40) • 5. The First Kiss (2:21) • 6. The Slow Down Plan (1:13) • 7. The Morning After/Meet the Press (2:11) • 8. Politics as Usual (0:57)

• 9. Never have an Airline Strike at Christmas (0:35) • 10. "I Have Dreamed" (The State Dinner)* (2:57) • 11. Camp David (1:30) • 12. Gathering Votes (2:36) • 13. Make the Deal (3:42) • 14. Decisions (1:45) • 15. President Shepherd (7:28) • 16. End Titles (5:05)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert contains a note from director Rob Reiner about the score.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The American President are Copyright © 1995, MCA Records and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/23/98 and last updated 12/31/07.