Filmtracks: Ghostbusters II (Randy Edelman)

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Written 1/20/22

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Buy it... only if you have an established attraction to Randy Edelman's simplistically affable style of writing and recording, this score adhering to the best and worst of his methods.

Avoid it... if you cannot accept Edelman's haphazard thematic attributions, silly parody stylings, frustrating album presentation, or refusal to acknowledge Elmer Bernstein's music for the concept.

Edelman

Ghostbusters II: (Randy Edelman) Enthusiasts of the Ghostbusters franchise have long lamented the languishing of the concept on the big screen, and 1989's disappointing sequel to the 1984 classic is largely the reason. With ownership over the property held by director Ivan Reitman and the movie's three major writers and stars, Ghostbusters II was the result of much wrangling to satisfy Bill Murray, whose concerns about the storyline of the second film were more than justified. All the principal characters return for another round of paranormal mass-destruction in New York City, the Carpathian villain feeding off of all the animosity of the people in the area. While the end result may not be as reviled as it was at the time of its release, the insistence by Harold Ramis and Dan Aykroyd that they use the social commentary about angry citizens as a central element of the story was never destined to be a winner. The production suffered poor test screenings that required reshoots to persist to the months just prior to the theatrical release, which badly underwhelmed. The film simply wasn't quite as funny, the plot not as compelling, and Murray didn't seem to want to be there half the time. Not surprisingly, the movie suppressed the franchise for decades, a spin-off in 2016 the result of endless bickering with Murray about allowing further expansion of the rights. For Ghostbusters II, while the basic equation for the picture stayed the same, many of the players behind the scenes did turn over. Composer Elmer Bernstein wasn't entirely thrilled by Reitman's use of songs in Ghostbusters, with the replacement of a few key cues meeting with significant composer disapproval despite his concession that Ray Parker Jr's title song was a smart choice. Disagreements between Bernstein and Reitman ultimately led the director to search for another composer. That next regular collaborator turned out to be Randy Edelman, who provided music for several major Reitman films in the late 1980's and 1990's. By the time Edelman joined the Ghostbusters II crew, Reitman had already been inundated with artists offering to contribute songs to the film and its soundtrack, with Parker Jr. joined by Bobby Brown to lead the selections this time.

Edelman remains satisfied with the amount of his music that was retained in Ghostbusters II, though no fewer than ten songs did end up in the final cut. (One of them, incidentally, was an Oingo Boingo entry, "Flesh 'n Blood," that only received very brief air time in the movie, a circumstance that Danny Elfman claims would have led him to withdraw his support for its use at all had he known it would receive so little prominence.) Regardless of the addition of two Brown songs and a host of others, the Parker Jr. song remained the favorite for the concept. Edelman's music holds a somewhat muted place in the history of the franchise. In the official trilogy of movies, Elmer Bernstein's original is highly respected and Rob Simonsen's 2021 expansion of that sound for Ghostbusters: Afterlife is a loving tribute that improves upon Bernstein's core material and sound. By comparison, Edelman's score for Ghostbusters II is a completely self-contained work, the composer explicitly choosing not to even study any of Bernstein's material for consideration. That decision, according to the composer, was met with approval from Reitman. Undoubtedly, Edelman had a stereotypical sound during this era of his career, his contemporary keyboarding familiar in countless comedies and romances while his blend of orchestra and synthetic augmentation defined his fantasy and action material. Without deviation, Ghostbusters II is a faithful combination of those two trademark sounds for Edelman. They have nothing in common with the personality or execution of Bernstein's score, of course, but they suffice basically to serve the needs of the film at a minimal level. Edelman's music is typically affable but simplistic and underdeveloped, his motifs often charming but not prone to impressive evolution in his scores. He conjures his base comfort zone and seven or eight themes, adding a beefier orchestral presence to the equation. While the presence of the sizable orchestra in the mix does assist the action passages and a few of the larger feel-good moments, it never really emerges out of the realm of corniness. (In fairness, some might have said the same about Bernstein's score.) The writing and orchestration of the major sequences has the feeling of parody at times, which may work for some listeners but does tend to diminish the whole. The composer comparatively excels at the lighter keyboarded passages, including his pop-infused suspense tones.

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There is rarely a moment in Ghostbusters II when Edelman isn't stating one of his themes, and those ideas usually stick to predefined instrumental parameters throughout. One detriment of the score is that despite a wealth of themes, none of them really identifies itself as the soundtrack's main tune. That duty should fall to the hero theme of the work, but Edelman doesn't reference it enough to give it memorability. The idea has a fanfare introduction and the full melody, and both exude a sense of silliness befitting a lower budget project. The fanfare's rhythm in particular gives off a cheap, Superman vibe. It opens "A Few Friends Save Manhattan," the cue appearing at the end of the credits, with a few early phrases revealed completely at 0:56. The most resounding rendition of the theme comes with the fanfare opening of "In Liberty's Shadow," the orchestral highlight of score that yields to the actual theme at 0:50 on synths before adding back in some orchestral elements later in the cue. The hero theme is given brief bursts in "Order in the Court," at 1:56 into "A Slime Darkened Doorway," and in the first minute of "Vigo's Last Stand." It emerges out of the love theme in "Family Portrait/Finale" for a new solo piano arrangement at 1:29. ("Finale" is actually an alternate full ensemble version tacked onto the end of that album track.) Sadly, this theme doesn't stick. The most memorable idea in Ghostbusters II is ironically the nursery rhyme, "Rock-a-bye baby on the tree top," which is all over this score, used for seemingly every appearance of the story's baby with highly obnoxious results. It's heard first at 1:04 into "A Baby Carriage Meets Heavy Traffic" with worry, takes a moment in the latter half of "Order in the Court" (actually the cue "She Cleaned" but inexplicably combined here on album) and in the middles of "He's Got Carpathian Eyes," "In Liberty's Shadow," and "Rooftop Broom Kidnap." Edelman adapts the tune extensively into his own trademark style in "Oscar is Quietly Surrounded," and hints extend to the start of "Enlightenment." The application of this melody into such a prevalent position in the score is a huge misfire by Edelman, because it further pushes the whole work into parody territory. The baby does have its own suspense motif of sorts, an electronic rhythmic device that foreshadows the opening cue of Kindergarten Cop. Heard late in "A Baby Carriage Meets Heavy Traffic," this material extends to 1:15 into "Vigo's Last Stand."

Two or three themes for the lead characters occupy the softer, keyboarded moments of Ghostbusters II. A general love theme for the overarching family of characters seems to have a separate partition for Dana specifically, but these ideas all intermingle in how they are dropped into the film, giving them identical purpose. These passages are the highlights of Edelman's score; it's where the composer always seemed to excel during this period in his career, and this project is no different. The softer material is featured at 0:08 into "A Few Friends Save Manhattan," returns at the end of "Order in the Court" on album, receives suite treatment in "The Sensitive Side of Dana," opens "Rooftop Broom Kidnap" for a Tully/Janine scene, briefly recurs at the end of "A Slime Darkened Doorway," offers a respite at 1:30 into "Vigo's Last Stand," and opens "Family Portrait/Finale." Meanwhile, Murray's Venkman character receives his own tune defined by Edelman's suite rendition in "Venkman's 6th Ave. Strut." In the actual score, it interjects for a moment at 2:18 into "Vigo's Last Stand" but really shines in "Good With Kids," which opens with only the idea's chords but becomes playfully fuller later; parts of this cue are repeated in the film. This latter material specifically previewed the cute classroom portions of Kindergarten Cop. The villainous Vigo the Carpathian receives two themes, one for action and another for his hypnotic effects. The action theme is extremely grating, its swirling strings and two-note brass phrases highly abrasive and overplayed in context. It's launched at 0:48 into "A Few Friends Save Manhattan," opens "Order in the Court" and consolidates later in that cue, and receives its most obvious performance in the film at 1:53 into "Rooftop Broom Kidnap." It returns at 0:48 into "Vigo's Last Stand" in full swirl, its progressions shifting towards the hero theme's phrasing nicely in one of the score's few moments of cross-thematic development. Momentary bursts of the theme also figure at 0:11 and 1:07 into "Enlightenment." More alluring in Ghostbusters II, and perhaps Edelman's most effective theme in the score, is his creepy melody for Vigo's effect on others. The hypnosis theme contains descending pairs of notes with dramatic appeal, Edelman alluding to it in a greater variety of instrumental shades than the other themes. In its most potent native form, it features slight choral menace over wet drum pads, leading to an ominous brass crescendo with timpani.

The hypnosis theme in Ghostbusters II can be heard at 0:27 into "He's Got Carpathian Eyes" and 0:27 into "In Liberty's Shadow," also hinted at 0:45 into "Rooftop Broom Kidnap" for suspense. It closes the ambient darkness of "The Scoleri Brothers" and receives suite-like attention at 1:02 into "Oscar is Quietly Surrounded" on synthetic orchestral tones; it shifts nicely synthetic choir at 2:26, and the interplay with the baby's theme is conceptually strong here even if it was never used in the picture. An action variant of the hypnosis theme is provided for the river of slime in "A Slime Darkened Doorway," but it returns to original form at the outset and 2:07 into "Vigo's Last Stand," shifting to slightly ominous strings at 0:21 into "Enlightenment." The final thematic influence on the score is Parker Jr.'s song melody, which figures at 1:36 into "The Scoleri Brothers" and in the humorous but annoying song variant instrumental in "One Leaky Sewer Faucet." Put together, the score for Ghostbusters II is more than a little schizophrenic outside of Edelman's established techniques of writing and recording. The score, like its predecessor, never received an official album release at the time of the film's debut. Edelman blamed that on musician re-use fees, though the failure of the sequel certainly didn't help his cause. It took until 2021 before Sony finally released a scant 45-minute score-only product, the disappointing length resulting from what Edelman claimed was the studio losing the master tapes for about half the score. As a result, alternates of some cues were used for the product, and to flesh out the character themes, Edelman newly recorded four cues ("Venkman's 6th Ave. Strut," "The Sensitive Side of Dana," "Oscar is Quietly Surrounded," and part of "Family Portrait") on his own with keyboards joined by synthetic orchestral samples. Also included is the wretched "One Leaky Sewer Faucet" even though it wasn't heard in the picture. Purists will lament the lack of film versions for several cues, along with a handful of cues missing altogether, but the real problem with the 2021 album is its terrible sequencing and inconsistent sound quality from track to track. The arrangement was produced by Edelman himself, and it's among the worst presentations of a score to be heard on album in years. Expect the ambient qualities of the tracks to differ significantly, some of the orchestral passages sounding distant while others vibrant. The score for Ghostbusters II is a tragedy, from Edelman's refusal to acknowledge Bernstein to the haphazard new thematic attributions, parody stylings, and frustrating album situation. Toss this one in the slime. ** @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Randy Edelman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.05 (in 20 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.16 (in 29,260 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

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