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Williams' painstaking attention to each and every note of this score is heard in the intricacy contained in many of its vibraphone and sax performances. It is no wonder that Williams turned some of the scoring duties of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (including arrangement and conducting) over to his friend and associate William Ross; the incredible detail in many of the solo performances for Catch Me If You Can is developed to such an extent that these sequences occasionally blur the mind's ability to accurately perceive them. Like The Terminal, the tone and genre of this score may diverge from the composer's normal output in the Digital Age, but each of its parts contains mannerisms in style that firmly remind the listener that it is indeed a Williams product. The ensemble for the recording is small, with a moderate orchestral presence that remains light on its feet while filling the gaps between the popular jazz performances of the principle solo artists. The title theme, heard to open and close the album (as well as in "The Float" and "Learning the Ropes"), is a shifty, but attractive rhythmic romp that is cyclical in its vibraphone and woodwind rhythms, a neat effect created by Williams in the process of representing a perpetual chase. The performance highlight of the work comes in "The Float," which exhibits an excellent sax solo that perfectly captures the light spirit of the score and film's first half, with ominous dramatic undertones introduced sparingly on bass strings to remind of the criminal element. The piano is also required at times to provide snazzy accompaniment at breakneck speeds. The score, as an entire package, however, is deceiving. It marks an upbeat return to the days of high jazz early, but then sinks further into a miserable and introverted form as the film and score continues. The official "concert suite" for the score is the very restrained "Recollections (The Father's Theme)," a piece that pulls from a more tender and dramatically engaging attitude in Williams' 1970's body of work. By the end of the score, the seriousness of the cat and mouse game has yielded a score that plunges into the complicated and subtle-toned atmosphere of Presumed Innocent.

The resulting overall effect of Williams' music for Catch Me If You Can is a fittingly depressing one. Do not be fooled by the seemingly frivolous direction that this score appears to be taking at the start. Short interludes of the title theme, which loses all its catchy style by the end, are performed by singular woodwinds in between low key shifts of strings. Brass exists in an accompaniment role at most, if at all. By the time the album reaches "Broken Home," the volume has been reduced to melancholy solitude carried by a slow solo harp and lonely shadows of the solo sax and piano performances that graced the score's beginning. Even the somewhat redeeming finale cue, "Doctor, Lawyer, Lutheran," provides only a glimmer of hope in a temporarily increased pace, eventually allowing the music to slowly fade into nothingness. When the lighter shades of retro, rhythmic style shine through, the resulting generational application places this score firmly in the era of The Towering Inferno, an easily recognizable trip to Williams' past. For listeners only familiar with Williams' post-Star Wars era of production, Catch Me If You Can will offer a strikingly different sound to which the unaccustomed may balk. The intrigue of the title track and the subsequent "The Float," the latter containing the sax solo that Spielberg boasts about in the notes he provided for the release, elevates those cues to the level of album highlights. After these two cues (and unless you count the reprise of the title recording at the end of the album), the product is a somber and reflective listening experience, with great emotional detail explored in each cue. Williams succeeded in producing the needed dramatic effect, but the album could suffer from a lack of engagement with many listeners as a result. By no means is Catch Me If You Can a consistently uplifting score or, for that matter, a very enjoyable one, especially when compared to The Terminal. If anything, however, Williams did avail himself of this opportunity to show that his diverse talents had not escaped him over the past decade of scoring primarily adventure films with massive ensembles. True Williams enthusiasts will likely find the album very interesting; it contains several pleasing songs from the era as well. It has always been difficult to determine if the mainstream will be attracted to this dated sound, though. A well-written, genre-constrained score.  ***   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

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For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68 (in 91 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.54 (in 363,495 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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