is a 1993 comedy that
accomplished several of his personal interests. It's a "coming of age"
picture for a group of pre-teen youth, it pokes fun at the B-rate horror
film industry of the 1950's and early 1960's, and it plays on the fears
of nuclear proliferation that were at their height in October 1962, the
time frame of movie's setting. While the group of young actors is more
than sufficient in their roles, it's John Goodman who steals the film as
showman Lawrence Woolsey, a character based upon the real-life horror
movie experimenter William Castle. Attempting to capitalize on nuclear
fears and bring the third dimension of film literally back to theatres,
Woolsey debuts a "movie within a movie" called "Mant" (featuring, as you
would expect, a creature that is half man, half ant) and includes drama
with a live "mant" inside the theatre itself at the showing. With
nostalgia and sentiment at heart, the comedy of the film is an extra
bonus. Keeping that premise in mind, composer Jerry Goldsmith provides a
score that is appropriately light-hearted but not as strictly comedic as
you might first imagine. With the collaboration between Dante and
Goldsmith spanning several decades and including many successful titles,
it's easy for
to slip through the cracks, though the
score has managed to remain a favorite amongst the composer's fans. An
important distinction to make in this soundtrack is between the music
you hear in "Mant" and that which Goldsmith wrote for the original
character drama. The old horror music applied as source is reused
material by Hans J. Salter, Henry Mancini, and others from actual films
of the era and genre, and only in the context of the stomping moments in
a cue like "Showtime" does Goldsmith play with some of that outwardly
Bernard Hermann-inspired knock-off style in his own material. While the
"Mant" music may, for some listeners, be the more memorable cue-by-cue
material in the soundtrack (the "Mant" film is, after all, quite funny),
none of that music exists within Goldsmith's contribution and is thus
absent from the albums.
Goldsmith's original material for
Matinee sounds
much like the lesser-inspired moments of
The 'Burbs from several
years earlier, pulling also from the procedures of composer's equivalent
contemporary dramas and comedies of 1992 and 1993. In regards to the
familiarity of nearly everything heard in
Matinee, the score may
be less entertaining in a comedy or action sense than other
Dante/Goldsmith pairings spanning from
Gremlins to
Looney
Tunes: Back in Action, nine films total by the composer's death.
Goldsmith's themes follow the route of sentimentality and nostalgia far
more than comedy, with the first half of the score containing little
excitement beyond the consistency of the composer's delightful, soft
melodies for woodwinds and swooning strings. The themes Goldsmith
concocts for these films are very similar, with
Love Field,
Rudy, and
Angie all coming to mind, though in the case of
Matinee, his customary electronics typically setting the pace in
such circumstances are mostly absent. (Varied percussion serves the same
role well.) Relying instead on the slur of a Henry Mancini-era jazz
theme and occasional string theme borrowings straight from the style of
Moon River as well,
Matinee is an instrumentally
conservative score. His identity for the kids of the story is a typical
lightweight fare for pulsating piano, strings and woodwinds, though the
ideas for the theatre owner are far more intriguing. For Goodman's
character, Goldsmith inserts some sleazy jazz on piano, making for some
greasy moments at the start, complete with carnival pipes at one point,
but the idea matures to some outwardly elegant renditions as the show
goes on in later cues. The unyielding optimism in this theme may annoy
some listeners, but that's the point. Brief militaristic material
representing the prospects of nuclear war echo some of Goldsmith's
stereotypical war genre techniques in two early cues, but don't expect
these entries to exhibit more than passing gravity. An attractive theme
for suburbia takes a page from
The 'Burbs with its chipper melody
over pulsating brass and plucking bass strings. The villain of the tale
receives a sleazy jazz identity of minimal malice.
The quantity of melodies for
Matinee is
surprisingly deep, with the final summary cues, "Preview" and "The Next
Attraction," stepping through most of the thematic ideas in one strong,
eight-minute sequence with adept transitions between melodies and ending
on a cute whistling sound effect from Goldsmith's library. (These cues
were separated in the film by a song but combined on the original album
into one track.) These closing highlights include an expansion of the
faster, rhythmic, percussion-driven piano cues that finally provide a
small taste of that
Gremlins attitude. The latter half of
Matinee provides a much more varied and interesting listening
experience than the first, melodically conservative half, including some
Basic Instinct and
Forever Young shades in "This is It."
If you could throw the short blasts of B-rate horror music in "Showtime"
and the striking military motif from "Mobilization" into the combined,
closing trio of cues, you have all the music from
Matinee that
you really need. The original 1993 album was long among those plentiful
Varèse Sarabande releases of Goldsmith's new music in the early
1990's that were too short for the most avid collectors but at least
remained available at decent prices on the market for decades. In 2022,
Intrada Records tackled the entirety of
Matinee in truly
outstanding sound quality, revealing a few important, unreleased cues in
a loving presentation that is resounding in ambient quality. The mix
isn't as reverb-dominant as that of the composer's late 1990's works,
but it definitely skews in that direction, lending surprisingly
fantastic presence for solo elements. The full score reinforces that the
score's style meanders all over the place, especially by its end, and
expect for it to test your patience. The bonus tracks at the conclusion
of the Intrada product illuminate a few arguably unnecessary alternate
takes but also provide the original source recordings unrelated to the
older, tracked material, which was not licensed for the product.
Goldsmith collectors will find merit in especially the additional early
cues in the main presentation, "Mobilization" a clear, albeit short
highlight. At the very least,
Matinee is a pleasantly harmless
score and remains a reliable survey of the composer's comedic tendencies
from the era.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Jerry Goldsmith reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.26
(in 124 reviews)
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