Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,944
Written 1/27/12
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Buy it... if five minutes of pretty, sentimental highlights for
orchestra and acoustic guitar from George Fenton are enough to justify
an otherwise rowdy and inconsistent blast of bluegrass and comedy
spirit.
Avoid it... if you have no interest in hearing the British composer
take a wild stab at humorous bluegrass outbursts, despite his success in
producing several truly wild cues that perhaps unintentionally poke fun
at the culture of America's Deep South.
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| Fenton |
Sweet Home Alabama: (George Fenton) The surprise
romantic comedy hit of 2002's autumn season was Sweet Home
Alabama, a Reese Witherspoon vehicle that was blasted by critics for
its unoriginal script but managed to stir up huge business at the box
office thanks to forgiving female audiences. In the plot, Witherspoon
plays a New York fashion designer engaged to the son of the city's mayor
(Candice Bergen in a limited role), but her life is complicated by the
fact that she skipped out on her marriage to her childhood friend back
home in Alabama. When her husband refuses to sign divorce papers, she
returns to her old community and runs through the normal comedic circles
expected for a film of this sorts. As one might imagine, everyone in the
Alabama setting is simply wonderful, including the husband, eventually
exposing Witherspoon's lead as the screw-up in this equation. Through
the help of her old friends and some nasty behavior by her New York
connections, the woman rediscovers everything about her heritage that is
truly special and there's the obligatory "happily ever after" moment.
For you, the success of Sweet Home Alabama will depend first on
how well you can identify with Witherspoon in the lead role and secondly
on how (un)believable it is that Alabama is a great place. Director Andy
Tennant has helmed several silly and ridiculous comedies of this sort,
many of which financial successes, and for the original scores in these
productions, he has often turned to British composer George Fenton.
Usually contending with numerous song placements in these assignments is
Fenton, whose best work for Tennant, Anna and the King, is not
surprisingly devoid of such troubles. In Sweet Home Alabama, the
composer had the troublesome task of connecting scenes in between these
high profile placements, led, of course, by the use of the famous 1970's
song "Sweet Home Alabama" (this time performed by Jewel). To his credit,
though, the Brit did stir up a genuine sense of comedic bluegrass spirit
for this score, traversing an extremely wide variety of genres on the
journey through America's Deep South and the usual romantic shades of
contemporary and traditional sounds common to these films. Like the
movie, Fenton's score hits all the right notes and utilizes all the
proper instrumental colors, but in the end, it's about as anonymous as
one could imagine. Despite Fenton's success in achieving all his goals
in this circumstance, the score-only album featuring this work is a
laborious challenge.
Like the song compilation album for the
Sweet Home
Alabama soundtrack, the score covers a lot of stylistic territory
during its journey. It opens with an extremely affable, bluegrass and
orchestral rendition of Fenton's main theme in "Lightning Strikes,"
introducing the acoustic guitars, electric bass, harmonica, and
percussion that will define much of the Southern personality throughout
the score. Immediately following, a metropolitan New York setting is
afforded keyboarded pop tones in "Tiffany's" before "North/South" adds
electric guitar and Hammond organ to the bluegrass tone, infusing a fair
amount of retro jazz into the mix as well. Most importantly, this shift
represents the switch towards the comedy realm in
Sweet Home
Alabama, with several subsequent cues pushing the tone of the
Southern personality to silly proportions. Softer acoustic guitar
expressions of the primary theme are the highlights of the middle
portion of the score, "Jake and Mel" about as easy as it gets for a
listening experience. Mixed throughout this score, even in the majority
of wild material for the locale, is an orchestral presence that
foreshadows the romantic conflicts to come later in the film. As the
clashes between characters and cultures approach their necessary
conclusion, Fenton slowly shifts the score back to the normal orchestral
romanticism one would expect for this topic. This transition is
confirmed in the lengthy "The Coon Dog Cemetary," which drops all
pizzazz but subtle guitar contributions and uses soft woodwind and
plucked string renditions of the main theme to convey the sincerity of
the scene. The orchestra prances into straight comedy mode in "The Same
Melanie," which uses a funny, bluesy clash between the classical and
bluegrass tones in affable rhythms. In "Andrew Wins Her Back" and "The
Glass Factory," peachy sentimentality is heard from woodwinds over
wafting strings, the slight slurring of progressions the reminder of the
score's previous incarnation. The "You Owe Me a Dance" cue is a solid
representative of the entire work's maturation, starting with a
downright rowdy 40 seconds of rock attitude before returning to the
gentler contemporary feel of "Jake and Mel." The cue eventually swells
into the score's only full-blooded orchestral statement of the main
theme, complete with a return to the tingling percussion hinted at the
very start of the film. Together, the impression that this score leaves
is what you would find when melding parochial Thomas Newman spirit and
Rachel Portman sappiness. In the end, "Jake and Mel" and the majority of
"You Owe Me a Dance" will combine for five minutes of very attractive
material for your Fenton compilations, but those highlights cannot
redeem an otherwise disjointed listening experience over the rest of the
album.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For George Fenton reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.64
(in 14 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.44
(in 16,916 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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