Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #921
Written 12/14/99, Revised 4/22/07
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Buy it... if you seek a score with the same themes and humor of
City Slickers, but with a far more boisterous, dramatic, and
muscular orchestral and choral presence.
Avoid it... if no amount of dramatic elegance in this score can
counter Marc Shaiman's usual shamelessly upbeat and overly-enthusiastic
attitude.
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| Shaiman |
City Slickers II: The Legend of Curly's Gold: (Marc
Shaiman) When the first City Slickers film stormed into theatres
in 1991, it unexpectedly earned massive returns for Columbia. And when
Jack Palance infamously followed his Oscar win for his role in the film
with some manly one-armed pushups and alluded to his knowledge of the
ladies while on stage, the studio was inevitably headed towards sequel
territory. With mostly the same cast, City Slickers II: The Legend of
Curly's Gold throws Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Palance back in
the saddle and this time on a quest for hidden gold. Like the first
film, the sequel has its more serious moments of bonding and identity
crisis, and in the somewhat mishandled balance between these moments and
the action scenes, most of the humor was missed by critics and
audiences. The screenplay for City Slickers II is far more
cliched than that of the first film, and it's no surprise therefore that
Marc Shaiman tips his hat some famous Western film music in his sequel
score. When he scored City Slickers in 1991, he was fresh on the
scene, with only a feature project or two under his belt. His Western
parody score pushed all the right buttons, however, and showed his
talents for writing in several genres of music that were humorously
incorporated throughout the film (and most of which previewed in the
rowdy title sequence). The problems that the original City
Slickers score suffered from were related partly to the erratic
style shifts, but mostly to a sparse recording quality. Those problems
are nearly solved in City Slickers II, with the inclusion of
non-Western stylized music held to only two cues of note and the
recording quality improved to the top limits of the era. Also working in
Shaiman's favor with City Slickers II is a more diverse
performing group and an obvious increase in the confidence with which he
handles them. When you compare the two scores back to back, you can
literally hear the composer transcend from being a newbie to an
accomplished artist in the field, and it is with great enthusiasm that
Shaiman revises his sound from City Slickers for a far superior,
rousing sequel run.
Every once in a while, you get a sense as a listener
that a composer thinks about a score for a good film and wonders for a
few years how it could have been done better. Even in the case of unique
projects like
City Slickers or
The Mask of Zorro (among
others), where the sequels are far worse in cinematic quality, you end
up hearing revised scores that do everything that you wished the
original had done. This is exactly the case with
City Slickers
II, for which Shaiman returns to all of the thematic ideas from the
first film and expands upon them with brilliant results. The jaunty
title theme and dramatic trail theme are both treated to far more robust
recordings, with a wider variety of well-recorded specialty instruments
(guitar, fiddle, harmonica, etc) and a light choir mixed into many of
their performances. The smaller motifs returning from
City
Slickers are expertly mixed with references to Jerome Moross'
The
Big Country, Elmer Bernstein's
The Magnificent Seven, and Max
Steiner's
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (the last of which is
the only one explicitly credited, though you can year references to
Bernstein's Western writing --both comedic and serious-- all
throughout). The score is perpetually thematic and upbeat (the calling
card of a Shaiman work), which can, in parts, be the only weakness. The
enthusiasm with which Shaiman rolls through his themes over rhythms
ranging from rap to honky tonk can be overwhelming, especially in the
reprised opening credits animation sequence. Undeniable, however, is the
depth of power that Shaiman exhibits in his straight dramatic sequences.
The choral-enhanced "There's Gold in Them Thar Hills" is a good example
of a cue that offers both a couple of wondrous ensemble crescendos and
some robust rhythmic work. As in any good Shaiman score, the percussion
section is put to the test; the Western rhythms lend themselves well to
varied drums and wood blocks, while the mystery of the topic allows for
a plethora of metallic elements. As a listening experience,
City
Slickers II is leagues ahead of its predecessor because it maintains
the same humor while boasting a muscular orchestral and choral presence.
The superb quality of the recording by Shawn Murphy cannot be emphasized
enough; the vibrance of the soundscape is crucial to the personality of
this score.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Marc Shaiman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.33
(in 12 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.17
(in 19,634 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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