Buy it... if no measure of positive spirit, even in short length and powerful doses, is too small to deter you from a predictably feel-good score.

Avoid it... if you're typically bothered by anonymous light-drama scores that constantly make you think you've heard the music somewhere before.

Patch Adams: (Marc Shaiman) Seen by some at the time as a desperate attempt by Universal to turn around a dismal 1998 in its final week, Patch Adams was a film with high hopes of pulling all the right emotional strings for audiences during the holidays. Made by the directors of the two Ace Ventura films and the remake of The Nutty Professor, the movie once again asked Robin Williams to reprise that fine line he walked in Dead Poets Society and several other films, allowing his free flowing comedy styles to accentuate an otherwise straight, dramatic performance. The problem with Patch Adams, though, is that it never succeeded in becoming comfortable with either its comedy or drama. Williams plays a mental patient who, at 40 and out of the ward, decides to become a medical student with the intent of using laughter as a method of healing. He obviously clashes with the establishment, and along the journey to its surprisingly upbeat ending, the film offers moments of grandiose speeches and decisions. Williams himself dissolves into some of his typical comedy routines, but his performance is always tethered by the film's almost fatal attempt to pull him back towards sappy and predictable dramatic turns. The film failed critically, slammed for its obvious attempts to manipulate audiences, and some of that endless over-the-top sweetness is owed to Marc Shaiman's equally predictable score. Like John Debney and David Newman, Shaiman often exhibited the ability in the 1990's to write music both shamelessly optimistic and, more importantly, technically anonymous. That anonymity, for all the composers who make a living in the B-rate comedy and light drama genres, is a characteristic that rarely inhibits the effectiveness of the music in their films, but often causes listeners of the music on the album to get that slightly uncomfortable feeling that he or she has heard the music before. Shaiman, more than most others, gives you this feeling; no matter how syrupy the product, you've tasted it before. And yet, it works, and his score for Patch Adams would be his third in four years to take advantage of the expanded Oscar categories for music and gain him an Academy Award nomination.