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| Horner |
The Chumscrubber: (James Horner) Black comedies
about the pitfalls of American suburban life for the teenage crowd have
experienced a renaissance in the last ten years, aided by the immensely
popular mainstream hit,
American Beauty. No film festival would
be complete with several entries in this genre (convenient, of course,
because of the low budgets required to make them), and a hyped favorite
at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival was
The Chumscrubber. A film
lauded by debutant director Arie Posen and screenwriter Zac Stanford,
The Chumscrubber is a look at life in Hillside, the shallow and
medicated suburb of average Americana (in this genre of film, at least)
in which parents don't care about their kids, the kids are hopelessly
ingrained in drugs, and a character who defeats nasties with his
detached head in a post-armageddon world of a video game both inspires
the teens and the title of this film. The irony is that if you've never
wandered about life in the drugged daze that these teens are
experiencing, you'd never be able to relate to the world that Posen has
brought to the screen. Despite a remarkable cast of stars portraying the
careless parents of these teens (no surprise for one of these artsy, hip
projects), the film's cartoonish and satirical edge lost most reviewers
before the film could reach a wide release. Torched by audiences who
likely didn't understand the film at all, it has all but disappeared
from mainstream contention. Like many Sundance films,
The
Chumscrubber attracted the services of a top composer, but not one
you'd think capable of scoring a film through the perspective of a
highly medicated or drugged out group of teens. The playfully black
nature of the film, bordering on the immensely tragic, would make this
project perfect for the talents of Danny Elfman (who never shuns
tragedy) or Thomas Newman (who has made a recent career in this genre),
but as the sticker on the CD proudly proclaims, the composer of
Titanic was inked to a deal for
The Chumscrubber.
If you sometimes think you're on drugs when you hear
James Horner use his same material over and over again in countless
scores (the ultimate doped up deja vu?), now you get to hear Horner do
his best imitation of taking a little snort himself. His rather short
contribution to the film features music that takes a dash of Danny
Elfman, a touch of John Ottman, and a snippet of Thomas Newman, and
provides a distinctly unique, though not necessarily sane recipe.
Bashers of Horner's repetitions will have a very hard time chewing on
this one, for Horner and his few trusty cohorts have produced a
small-scale score for piano, guitar, and synthesizer that wouldn't be
recognizable as a Horner work to even his most hardy collectors. Music
for satires like this require a devilish design, and that's something
that Horner doesn't accomplish on the merits of his own writing, but he
does accomplish it simply because the music is so different from his
other works. A simplistic theme constructed from four chord progressions
repeats endlessly in its performances, separated by wild tangents with
rhythms obviously aimed at the openly comedic scenes, and one
outrageously funny and truly awful cue for the title character. The tone
of the score is subdued in its lack of density --a total and complete
opposite of the concurrent
Flightplan-- and rolls gently along in
the same daze as scores like
Holy Smoke! and
One Hour
Photo. These rhythms often consist of a meandering synth sound
design, an acoustic guitar, and piano, and to its benefit, Horner
mirrors the drug-induced pleasures with a constantly harmonious and
pleasant tone... and a very eerie one at that.
The "Dolphins" and "Digging Montage" cues are straight
from a new age album meant to put you asleep, and that's why the more
extroverted cues will catch your attention off the bat. Almost
Italian-style rhythms with faux-clarinet melodies occupy three cues, and
in "Pot Casserole" and "A Confluence of Families," you hear Horner do
his most genuine imitation of Danny Elfman's subtle, tragic cues for
Corpse Bride or
The Nightmare Before Christmas, complete
with a longing piano and music box effect. The most awkward cue is
"Parental Rift/The Chumscrubber," the latter of which demands a lengthy,
chaotic theme for electric guitar, heavy bass rhythms, and a wickedly
perverse attitude. The wailing sirens in the distance make this a
perfect cue for late night broadcasts out your apartment windows. The
score ends without ceremony, and begs the obvious question about the
motives behind the music. On its own, it is quite pretty in sections
(making a good anthem for the suburbia portrayed on screen), and it has
a few hilarious individual cues. But the comedic rhythms are handled
with a far sharper touch by other composers, and you have to wonder if
something a little more dense (even in the same instrumentation) would
have given the score a more believable intensity. In other words, the
score for
The Chumscrubber doesn't prove Horner's capability in
the drug genre, although you certainly have to admire him for trying.
The album contains about 35 minutes of his score and five songs that
really do play better to the genre. That cue for the video game
character is not to be missed; who says Horner doesn't have a sense of
humor? Perhaps this is evidence that the man has a quality parody score
in his blood, ready to be unleashed someday...
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,344 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.
