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Review of Mr. Destiny (David Newman)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you want an alternately magical and conservative symphonic score of redemption from a veteran of B-rate comedy compositions.

Avoid it... if you've never been wildly enthusiastic about David Newman's significant collection of lighthearted orchestral writing.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Mr. Destiny: (David Newman) It's been done before, and it's been done with far more originality. It never seems that Mr. Destiny apologizes for borrowing so many ideas from other films, and to make matters worse, it makes little attempt to take those ideas in a new direction. If you're familiar with "It's a Wonderful Life" or "A Christmas Carol," then you'll immediately identify James Belushi in the Scrooge role in Mr. Destiny. He's a defeated man, still stuck on his memory of striking out in a high school baseball championship; when his boss fires him, his car breaks down, and everyone forgets his birthday, he stumbles into an empty bar where he tells the bartender that everything has gone wrong in his life since that baseball game. Lucky for him this bartender is none other than Michael Caine in the role of God (or guardian angel, or ghost of Christmas past... makes no difference). Caine takes Belushi on a trip back in his life to discover what might have happened had things turned out differently, allowing Belushi to live out his alternate reality (and swap Linda Hamilton for Rene Russo, which makes anyone wonder why the guy is dissatisfied in either case). Some comedic moments result, but the problem with Mr. Destiny is that it takes so long to get to its salvation and offers too few laughs in between. Everything is painfully predictable and drawn out, and critics and audiences identified the film as a rehash without the comedy to float its tired script. Interestingly, some of America's foremost critics (including Roger Ebert) criticized the underscore of the film as being uninspired, and the writer of that score is David Newman. For decades, Newman has been stuck writing dumb comedy music, wasting his talents on films that don't deserve the kind of orchestral integrity that he offers. Someone has to do the job, though, and Newman seems to dive head-first into these projects.

You can tell what Newman was trying to do with Mr. Destiny right off the bat. He approached the score from the mystical standpoint, attempting to win over the audience with tingling sensations of magic rather than the personality of his comedy writing. When you condense his score down onto one Varèse Sarabande 30-minute album, what you hear is much of the bravado of the suspenseful universe-shifting sequences and some stock action motifs. The ensemble consists of a moderately-sized orchestra and Newman's synthetic aides. His score functions best when he incorporates the sparse electronic accompaniment into the mix, causing the straight, rather mundane symphonic underscore to beg for more of that creativity. A conservative major-key approach maintains a lighthearted base for Newman's free-floating themes. The structures in the score are fluff for the most part, though in the opening suite and final "Larry is Home" cue, he does offer his title theme with a rolling string effect that boosts the power to impressive levels. With several cues featuring this level of activity throughout the score, it's hard to figure exactly what the critics were noticing when they criticized the lack of music in the film; while the album only represents a fraction of the running time of the entire film, the significant volume of Newman's music in these 30 minutes seems to debunk that criticism. A fanfare in "Larry is Changed" has all the bravado and gleaming success as Galaxy Quest, and some of the boiling string rhythms will remind of The Phantom. The low key sequences during romantic conversation pieces do drag on, but even at their slowest ("Larry Looks for Ellen"), the piano and woodwind performances are far from lifeless. The score's primary drawback is its general lack of creativity in an otherwise highly magical situation. Newman tries to accomplish this, but it sometimes borders on trite and you have to figure that if he was attempting to draw from a broad orchestral base for the mysterious circumstances of the story, some more over-the-top writing might have helped the film distinguish itself. In the plethora of similar David Newman scores, Mr. Destiny is decent, but not worth a lengthy search.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 30:10

• 1. Mr. Destiny (5:04) • 2. Main Title (1:44) • 3. Larry's Life is Changed (3:43) • 4. Cindy Joe's Present (1:14) • 5. Larry Sees His Office (0:50) • 6. Larry Sees His House (1:56)

• 7. Leo Sneaks Around (0:29) • 8. Larry Meets Jerry (4:16) • 9. Larry Looks for Ellen (3:52) • 10. Larry Punches Out Niles (1:07) • 11. Going Back Home (0:48) • 12. Larry is Home (5:07)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes no extra information about the score or film.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Mr. Destiny are Copyright © 1990, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 4/20/97 and last updated 4/23/06.