Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,943
Written 1/3/12
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Buy it... if you appreciate every instance in which 1970's funk is
resurrected with enthusiastic zeal in a modern film score.
Avoid it... if, conversely, you hear funk in your nightmares and
expect the contrived Latin and orchestral passages in Theodore Shapiro's
score to save you from insanity.
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| Shapiro |
Fun With Dick and Jane: (Theodore Shapiro) While
Hollywood remakes aren't always a good idea, the bevy of dubious
corporate failures in real life America during the early 2000's yielded
the perfect environment for a revisiting of the 1977 comedy Fun With
Dick and Jane. The 2005 revision of the concept starred Jim Carrey
and Tea Leoni, both of whom end up out of work and decide to continue
their comfortable lifestyle by robbing just about anything. They
eventually turn their attention to the CEO at the husband's former
employer, an Alec Baldwin character of smarm who squirreled away
hundreds of millions of dollars while having taken the massive company
under because it cooked its books. As they endeavor to trick him into
returning the money to themselves and other former employees, Fun
With Dick and Jane becomes the ultimate revenge flick for those who
lost their fortunes working for or investing in unviable corporations at
the time, and most of the film's best moments involve direct pokes at
these inspirational failures. Carrey's antics didn't impress critics,
however, and some have argued that his casting added unnecessary
stupidity to the otherwise potentially poignant plot. Audiences
disagreed, however, making Fun With Dick and Jane one of the more
notable holiday success stories at the box office that year. The
soundtrack for the movie utilized a wide variety of songs, varying
wildly between genre and age. In between these inclusions is a rather
predictable but functional parody underscore by Theodore Shapiro, who
was making a career for himself at the time by providing glitzy,
genre-defying scores for countless B-rate comedy films that occasionally
transcended at the box office. As with many of Shapiro's peers in the
comedy scoring industry, it's tough to get a feeling for what the
composer's personal style of writing is really like; projects like
Fun With Dick and Jane force him to emulate others who have come
before him and are stylistically all over the map. In this case in
particular, Shapiro confessed to following a different procedure when
writing the score, declining to wait until the film was finished before
writing and recording several sketches based upon the concept and
allowing a fair amount of the music to be edited into the film where
necessary later. Given that most comedies like this feature an endless
parade of very short cues, perhaps there can be no fault assigned to
this methodology here.
It's clear from the start that Shapiro tackled
Fun
With Dick and Jane by returning to the musical roots of the 1977 era
of the original film. The dominant style of the remake is that of pure
70's funk, resurrecting Isaac Hayes and all of the stereotypical
instrumentation of that genre with unashamed enthusiasm. The
keyboarding, guitars, and percussion to this end are all very well
handled, breathing new life into the very dated sound. The majority of
important "action" cues in
Fun With Dick and Jane are handled
with some variation of the funk and rock blend of 70's origin, pushing
some Lalo Schifrin into the mix as well during the snazziest moments.
The tone shifts a bit more modern in a cue like "Escape from the
Headshop" and features a distinctively Latin subtext in that cue and the
pair of "I.N.S.!" and "Illegal Immigration." While the funk is pretty
consistent in its effective development, the Latin elements (complete
with hand clapping and castanets) are a bit too contrived by comparison,
trying too hard to imitate Zorro-like material in these cues. Likewise,
unconvincing are the purely orchestral cues, which start with the "Main
Title" and generally address the softer and more sensitive moments in
the plot. The score's only substantial theme exists in these passages,
introduced in extreme perkiness in those opening titles and taking on a
more wholesome tone in "400 Million Dollars." The former cue bounces
along with the rollicking bliss of an average Jerry Goldsmith theme for
a small drama in the 1990's, though Shapiro attempts to take the idea
into Danny Elfman territory in the latter cue. The fuller orchestral
moments suffer from a dull mix that drains the life out of the otherwise
lively funk score. The duo of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Gun Pull" offers
somber orchestral background filler that bogs down the score
considerably. The funk, conversely, is where the fun truly exists, and
the album arranges the contents of the score so that a representative
variety of this music is conveyed in the first four tracks. Expect to
hear very little cohesion in this work, whether presented
chronologically or not, because Shapiro switches genre at will and only
succeeds in tying in the one main orchestral theme in the redemptive
end. But on the whole, the score is affectionately functional and will
appeal to lingering funk enthusiasts; a very short presentation on album
without a selection of any of the songs from the film is a major
detriment, though. Equally problematic is "The Insects Are All Around
Us," featuring a funk performance by Money Mark that follows an old
spoken lecture about the science of crickets. Funny, but highly
annoying, just like the score in sum for those who hear funk in their
nightmares.
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