Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #885
Written 10/9/01, Revised 2/10/09
Invert Colors
Buy it... if you appreciate the sense of instrumental and stylistic creativity that John
Ottman often brought to undeserving projects early in his career, regardless of how cute and
stupid they may be.
Avoid it... if you're either looking for any of the songs placed at the forefront in the
film or have a general allergic reaction to exuberant parody scores.
 |
| Ottman |
Bubble Boy: (John Ottman) Brought back into mainstream pop culture
vocabulary by a classic episode of the television show "Seinfeld," the concept of the "bubble
boy" was a source of much amusement for the segment of the population not afraid of being
politically incorrect. The film Bubble Boy, comically portraying the teenage (coming of
age) years of such a bubble person, was an immediate critical disaster, making one wonder once
again why films like this are even attempted. The most publicity for the project came,
ironically, when the film was boycotted and blacklisted by the "bubble people" of America
(there's probably a politically correct euphemism for their unfortunate kind, but honestly... who
cares?). By speaking out against the film's obviously poor portrayal of teenage life for a bubble
boy, they caused the film to actually gain more attention than it likely should have received,
thus defeating the point of the boycott. The score for Bubble Boy was a task for John
Ottman, who had to share the film's soundtrack with numerous overshadowing songs. Some of
Ottman's rough synthetic demo renderings for certain scenes would eventually be replaced by songs
as well. Even so, over a half an hour of his material was prominently featured in the comedy, and
it's strong evidence of Ottman's ability to toy around effectively at the periphery of the parody
genre. Ten years prior, this would have been a stereotypical Danny Elfman project, with a calling
for the blending of countless genres of music and a perky comedy edge to boot. As a matter of
fact, one other film music reviewer referred to Bubble Boy as "Ottman does Elfman again."
Yet another fellow writer, though, reminded us that Ottman's talents are advertised as a blending
of Elfman and Jerry Goldsmith, and the style of the latter very easily be heard in Bubble
Boy. The combination of orchestral and synthetic in this score, especially in the hopelessly
cute cues, does hail back to The 'Burbs, while the handling of the orchestral in its
various genres is similar in many ways to Elfman works like Flubber. This score proves
that, in certain circumstances, "Ottman does Elfman" better than Elfman could do it himself at
the time.
The score for
Bubble Boy exhibits creativity on the part of the composer
that you don't often hear in small scale comedy scores anymore. The work has surprisingly tender
and thematically rich moments, with funny interludes of jazz, country, and contemporary rock
mixed in for specific scenes. The "Girl Next Door" cue, for instance, is a bluesy jazz piece for
electric bass, saxophone, percussion and a deep black male voice whispering "oh, mama" and "oh,
baby." Hints of the percussive detail woven into
Goodbye Lover are on display at several
points, too (though similar instrumentation is likely the greater reason for the connections).
Ottman does once again reference traditional pop culture themes and interpolate them into
ridiculous scenes in the film. At times, as in the lovely tandem of "Birth of Bubble Boy" and
"Phreaks!," he employs a theme with a distinct touch of early 90's Goldsmith; the former track,
with its exclaiming choral bursts, even makes use of a phrase from "America the Beautiful."
Ottman's usual touch for creative instrumentation and twists of melody is well employed in the
score, keeping it interesting long after most parody works would have become tedious. The album
was met with quite a bit of angst from mainstream moviegoers, whose general response was "the
only good thing about the film was the music." What they're referring to, unfortunately, are the
songs. None of those songs appear on this album, though there will be some pop identification
with the very lively adaptation of Bill Conti's
Rocky (one of the better recordings of the
theme in recent times). Thrown onto the product for the score fans, however, are three
interesting tracks that didn't make it into the final edit, including a general demo for the film
and the two cues that were lifted for songs. This album was never destined to remain long in the
top 100,000 selling albums world-wide (especially with the bad karma of being released on
September 11th, 2001), but it was still a showcase for the kind of work in which both Ottman and
Elfman collectors might find some merit. It's certainly not stylistically consistent in any way,
jumping genres at will, but if you're in a zany mood (which is, again, where Elfman listeners
enter the equation), then
Bubble Boy could be a very enjoyable and undemanding listening
experience on album.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For John Ottman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.17
(in 35 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.05
(in 21,449 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
