PRINTER FRIENDLY VIEW
(inverts site colors)

Diversions like The Family Stone seem to represent the least popular Giacchino music on the market during his first decade of film score writing, and Monte Carlo is likely to appeal to Mancini fans specifically while finding less success with those desiring the composer's own musical voice. There are structural presentations of thematic ideas in Monte Carlo that will remind of Giacchino's prior comedy music, but the parody is anonymous enough in style that a amateur film music listener may not be able to tell if this Mancini love-fest came from Giacchino, Marc Shaiman, Christopher Lennertz, or half a dozen other composers. On the positive side, Giacchino does really capture that vintage comedy jazz spirit with technical mastery. His applications of various saxophones, muted brass, and fluttery woodwinds are extremely adept. He uses an acoustic guitar and piano (sometimes together) for the warmer portions of the score, highlighting certain conversation scenes with a slightly more contemporary tone. Electric bass and accordion are added as appropriate accents, the latter still a bit challenging to tolerate but fitting with the lazy brass swings and tapped metallic percussion. As a summary of the straight Mancini tribute portions of the score, "Almost Everyone is Happy" is a solid representation. The downside to Monte Carlo is obvious, however. Unless you are a clearly acknowledged fan of this specific Mancini sound (or perhaps an equal enthusiast of the older, larger ensemble jazz), this music will be as obnoxious to you as the movie itself. There is a thematic core to the score that follows the three girls through their adventures, but they are so saturated with the same comedy tone that some listeners may not find much need to segregate them for any purpose. The presentation of the music is extremely static, with nary a moment of dissonant troubles, and the snapshot succession of the typically short cues (the majority of them run at or below a minute in length) does become tedious after twenty such little vignettes. There is no substantial narrative arc, causing the music to never develop from any starting point to a climax or resolution. It is Mancini sonic wallpaper from start to finish, and with 48 very short tracks on the album presentation, it gets old fast. A nasty piece of distortion at 1:18 into "Pairing Up" is a mastering blunder. Giacchino does arrange and/or save some of the longer performances for near the end of the product, and perhaps the album would have benefitted from a slimming down to 25 minutes and combining of those merged highlights with the two end credits songs heard in the film that are absent from this score-only album ("Who Says" by Selena Gomez & the Scene is a particularly notable omission). Beware the tedious cuteness of this one.  **   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.46 (in 43 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.21 (in 23,411 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.

Total Time: 48:07