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Review of Valentine's Day (John Debney)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you are a hopeless romantic at heart and can never get enough pretty, conservative, orchestral and contemporary light drama music despite its inherent similarity to the genre's long history.

Avoid it... if you appreciate this style of music but seek a truly memorable, heartbreaking variation on its general sound, in which case Craig Armstrong's Love Actually remains a superior alternative.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Valentine's Day: (John Debney) The concept of a large ensemble cast love story centered around a holiday isn't entirely new to the movie industry, but director Garry Marshall took it to extreme levels with his 2010 venture Valentine's Day. With a massive group of stars ranging from teenage heartthrobs to favorite veterans, the story attempted to weave a complex tapestry of couples in various states of distress and elation, giving audiences just a brief glimpse into roughly twenty individuals while maintaining a warm, feel-good romance environment sure to attract the ladies into theatres. Unfortunately, while Valentine's Day had a huge opening in America, Marshall's efforts were greeted by negative reviews and the film didn't prove to have legs. That hasn't stopped the director (and writer of the story) from immediately announcing work on a sequel set around new year's eve in late 2011. The fatal problem with Valentine's Day was its attempt to emulate the popular and successful 2004 film Love Actually, which followed roughly the same formula, but did so with a cast about half the size. By expanding the story of Valentine's Day to encompass so many cameo performers, the story started stealing ideas from a range of other films to fill its seemingly endless loops of character connections. The music for the two productions also turned out to be quite similar, both receiving chart-inhabiting song album compilations of music heard in the film. The films also shared a remarkably similar need in terms of the original underscore, the genre demanding pleasantly soothing light orchestral, piano, and acoustic guitar approaches. Marshall (along with his directing sister, Penny) has rotated through several compositional masters of romance in the last twenty years, ranging from James Newton Howard and Patrick Doyle to Rachel Portman. Collaborating with the director for his two The Princess Diaries films and Raising Helen, however, was film music chameleon John Debney, who tackled Valentine's Day at roughly the same time as he let loose with bad-ass electric guitars in Iron Man 2. Debney is as safe a choice for this kind of assignment as anyone, and his effortless addressing of the topic is conveyed in the smooth personality of the music. Unlike, Craig Armstrong's music for Love Actually, however, Debney's score for Valentine's Day is largely unmemorable despite its effectiveness.

Because of the substantial fragmentation of the plot of Valentine's Day, Debney was at something of a disadvantage. Armstrong was able to create unique identities for each of the couples in Love Actually (despite competing with the song placements) because there were essentially only four major lines to follow in that film. In Valentine's Day, there is so much interwoven interaction between incidental, poorly developed characters that Debney really had no way to create and maintain consistent thematic or instrumental distinction for anyone on screen. He does provide cues of unique character at times, including a John Barry-style of melodramatics for the older couple in "Edgar & Estelle" (which also sounds eerily similar to Lee Holdridge's Old Gringo), but the majority of the score is frightfully anonymous. It never reaches to memorable heights as Armstrong's Love Actually does, instead content to play the field conservatively with only one overarching theme to neatly wrap up the giant circle. Heard in an instrumental crescendo in "Valentine's Day," this theme is adapted throughout the work and is the basis for the Carina Round-performed song featured at the end of the score album. There is a timeless quality to the song that gives it a silver screen appeal, and appreciation has to be expressed for just how lovely the song adaptation is. In many ways, it finally provides an outward expression of emotion that the score only functionally touches upon. That theme opens the album in "The Proposal/Trying to Tell Her," passed from acoustic guitar to piano and clarinet. It later occupies a flute, harp, and dreamy strings, never seemingly troubled outside of an occasional yearning, hanging note at the end of a cue. The 36 minutes of score material on the album rarely diverges from this tone, though occasional pizzazz is offered with snazzy passages for light rock or vintage Hammond organ-type funk. The score album from WaterTower (Warner Brothers' new distribution arm for soundtracks) is arranged so that almost 40 very short cues are condensed into 14 tracks, leaving silence in between each cue within a track; while this is good for those who want to pull out specific cues from within a track to enjoy, the listening experience does stutter as a result. Some of the less than 30-second recordings probably should have been dropped to speed things along. Still, this music is as consistently innocuous as it can get, and it's difficult to reward Debney's efforts with a rating less than the average three stars. That said, for a better variant of the same idea, on screen and on album, seek Love Actually instead.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 39:16

• 1. The Proposal/Trying to Tell Her (2:20) • 2. The Makeup/First Kiss (2:25) • 3. Apartment Dwelling/Hollywood Loft (0:48) • 4. Arrival/Airport/Catching Julia/Gotta Stop Them (2:55) • 5. Flower Shop Talk/To the Restaurant/The Realization/Mi Familia (3:27) • 6. Light Conversation/Chivalrous Gestures/He's Married/Forget Me Not (3:24) • 7. Liz Leaves/Having Sex/I Have No Life (3:10) • 8. Julia Sees the Light/Edgar & Estelle/Young Love/First Time (3:31) • 9. She Said No/Don't Go/I Like Her (3:50) • 10. My Life's a Mess/This is Awkward (1:22) • 11. Ride Home/Guys Talk (1:47) • 12. Mom's Home/Soccer Practice/Bike Ride (2:23) • 13. Reed and Julia (2:26) • 14. Valentine's Day (2:31) • 15. Every Time You Smiled - performed by Carina Round (2:53)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes a list of performers, but 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 Valentine's Day are Copyright © 2010, Watertower Music and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 5/24/10 (and not updated significantly since).