Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,959
Written 11/27/15
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Buy it... for its entertaining play on the vintage James Bond title
song and select individual moments in its competent but not particularly
memorable Theodore Shapiro score.
Avoid it... if you expect Shapiro to really let rip with a
full-fledged Bond parody score, his romance and action sequences rather
tepid and favoring a more generic thriller genre ambience.
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| Shapiro |
Spy: (Theodore Shapiro) Those seeking to dispel
society's prejudices against body image stereotypes were horrified by
2015's super-agent parody Spy, a film with a bloated premise
built upon a meaty foundation with the wide girth of its jokes about a
woman's immense physical size. Joining the usual bad-ass agents in the
appealing forms of Jason Statham and Jude Law is a CIA desk operative
with the bulbous shape and brash attitude of comedian Melissa McCarthy,
the three of them thrown into a full-fledged James Bond script that
requires McCarthy's fat luck to save New York City from a nuclear
suitcase bomb in transit through Europe. Kudos must be given to Statham
for his appearance in this flick, his straight-laced continuation of his
other screen personas the perfect foil for McCarthy's blathering idiocy
and inertial clumsiness in the active field of professional
assassinations and organized crime. Despite relying heavily on
McCarthy's size for many of its jokes, Spy sat on the competition
and garnered the admiration of a majority of critics, consuming nearly a
quarter billion dollars at the box office and becoming one of the
summer's qualified hits. Parodies of the Bond franchise have yielded
some entertaining scores through the years, shameless imitations of John
Barry and David Arnold's styles for the franchise (one has to wonder if
Thomas Newman's scores for Bond could ever be parodied given how
comparatively anonymous they are) abounding through high orchestral jazz
and electronic loops of sophistication for otherwise foolish leads.
Actor-turned director Paul Fieg, after utilizing the services of
composer Mike Andrews for his prior high-profile projects, was afforded
parody score master Theodore Shapiro for Spy. Shapiro's work in
the field is extensive and highlighted by Tropic Thunder and
Blades of Glory, his ear adept at pinning genre sounds with an
effective balance of serious tone (as required for any parody) and a
hint of outward tongue-in-cheek humor. His contribution to Spy
takes the more serious route, as per instructions from Fieg, who saw his
project as a spy thriller first and comedy spoof second. Complicating
matters is the fact that the director wanted the music already prepared
before final editing of the product as to avoid a temp track, a choice
which meant that Shapiro was simply writing Bond-like score material
blind. The resulting music is competent but not particularly
overwhelming, too much of its running time a generic plug-and-play
experience due, possibly, to that production process.
The formula for the score's constructs is extremely
familiar to the music in any given Bond film, without the memorable
romantic secondary identity that goes underdeveloped in
Spy due
to the comedic tilt. You encounter an opening action sequence that
introduces the score's main theme, the obligatory sultry pop song, the
overwrought secondary theme of grandeur for the villain of the tale, and
the usual electronic loops of contemporary appeal for the technological
elements. The highlight of the bunch, ironically, is the song, which
Shapiro co-penned with Craig Wedren and features the score's main theme
with bravado at its outset and in counterpoint later on. The lyrics
aren't quite funny enough to merit the Shirley Bassey-like imitation
vocals by Ivy Levan, but the result is still very strong given your
expectations for a context like this one. A short preview of the song is
provided early in the presentation and the fuller version concludes the
narrative. As for the actual score, Shapiro competently navigates
through extensive development of his two main themes for
Spy, but
neither is really opened up full throttle to such an extent as to make
his work truly memorable. The main theme consists of four two-note
phrases that are nicely malleable in that they can exist in any duration
(Shapiro often only presents one of the phrases before waiting a few
measures to move on to the second phrase, and so on), and you hear this
idea immediately from faint strings in "Agent Bradley Fine." Fuller
ensemble renditions of this theme are present in both "Bulgarian
Breakout" and especially "Vespa Chase," and it seems to serve the movie
as a whole rather than one character. The longer-lined theme for the
baddies in the story is more typical to the Bond franchise's style and
makes its first substantial impact in "To Rome" before adopting a
greater presence that eventually dominates "Garage
Fight/Helicopter/Death of De Luca." What little romanticism that
survives in the score typically reveals itself in the location-related
cues, as in "City of Varying Lights," "To Rome," and most notably
"Casino di Roma." Look for Shapiro's nod to John Barry's woodwind solos
in these portions. The remainder of score, although appropriately
bombastic during the chase sequences, is surprising anonymous, the
ambient suspense and chase material in the latter half especially
lacking in memorable substance. A cue such as "Shut Down the Grid" is
largely useless outside of the film, for instance. Shapiro also
underplays the romantic stance in "Agent Susan Cooper" at the end, his
piano and harp interludes simply not impactful enough for the full
comedic punch of the closing scene. In the end, expect the song, "Who
Can You Trust?," to completely steal the show after the score's less
appealing portions are exposed on album.
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