Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #690
Written 1/9/04, Revised 3/15/09
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Buy it... only for the tardy, but welcome spirit of John Powell's
last five minutes of material, finally injecting true spirit into an
otherwise lifeless work.
Avoid it... if you're looking for Jennifer Lopez performances or,
per chance, a score of interesting or engaging character.
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| Powell |
Gigli: (John Powell) It's hard to imagine which
reason is the most substantial cause of this film's legendary status:
its own hideousness or the fact that it displayed two pop-culture stars
who were heating up the sheets together. In Hollywood, you usually get a
film loved by critics and hated by audiences, vice versa, or, if a
studio hits the jackpot, the admiration of both groups. It's not often
that a project flunks both public opinion and critical evaluation to
such a fantastic level as Gigli (pronounced Zs-eally as part of a
pun in the film), but the film became so well-known for its poor quality
that it likely made some "top-100 worst films of all time" lists right
off the bat. The incomprehensible plot follows a loveable
henchman/hitman with feelings (sense a problem right there?) who is
tasked with kidnapping a mentally retarded kid so that his boss can
extort money from a federal prosecutor. The catch is that his boss also
has a curvaceous lesbian (...lesbian?) watch him to make sure that all
goes well, and, well, you know who plays whom. With a film choked by
dialogue so dreadful, many wondered exactly what happened when director
Martin Brest saw this script and thought it would be a good idea to
present it to a willing public. On the soundtrack front, Brest had
worked well with Thomas Newman in his previous two major efforts
(Meet Joe Black and Scent of a Woman), and Newman can only
be thankful that he didn't take the Gigli assignment. Instead,
John Powell will forever see his name attached to the project, which
likely doesn't bother him to any great extent given the questionable
quality of some of the assignments he had taken in the previous three or
so years. He was becoming a less expensive alternative to John Debney
for studios, and he typically provided equally serviceable, if not
occasionally interesting music for films of this trashy variety. The
content of Gigli would not inspire him to greatness, however, and
perhaps his own screening of the film caused him to slosh through the
project without much inspiration for fresh new ideas. If you enjoyed
Powell's work for films like Two Weeks Notice, then Gigli
is a poorer extension of that sound.
Powell's music for
Gigli is somewhat hip, laced
with arguably inappropriate Western tones, romantic in its basic
harmonious simplicity, and lacking in an abundance of novel ideas. It is
mundane score with little character until its final few cues. Two sides
of the score alternate depending on how painfully conversational the
situation is on screen (a red flag right there, given that the music had
to compete with that awful dialogue). First, you have the urban,
supposedly cool, light rock that you get from a guitar, electric organ,
and percussion. If you can tolerate electric organs (which is a big
"if," because when isolated like it is here, it could easily make you
pull your hair out), then these cues are listenable in a generic, bland
sort of contemporary fashion. The same applies to the light orchestral
cues with piano and pleasant acoustic guitar. A string section is
accompanied by the band and a few flutes to produce harmonious
meanderings of pleasant chords. For such a monumentally horrible film,
one might expect a score just as offensive, but if Powell's score is to
be criticized negatively, then it would suffer that comment because it
simply doesn't try to flourish beyond its own stale flavor. That is,
until the final cues presented on the album, and this is where Powell
collectors can claim a saving grace and pull his score from the same
depths of despair experienced by the film. Finally sincerely developing
its thematic ideas in "Pro Perogative," Powell shifts gears completely
in "Nice Weather," which plays upon a Western rhythm to the full extent
of the strings, piano, and guitar, and whipping up surprising attitude
with several flutes. It almost stinks of Randy Edelman fuzziness, but
after half an hour of Powell's largely boring underscore, it's a welcome
change. Likewise, the final cue explodes into a climax complete with the
full ensemble engaged with gospel singing. It's completely out of blue,
but the "Rochelle" cue also injects some life into the rubbery album,
even if only briefly. Comically, the Varèse Sarabande label felt
obliged (perhaps legally necessitated by their contract to purchase the
score) to tell buyers that the album does not include a Jennifer Lopez
single ("Baby, I Love U"), costing them several thousand possible
purchases by J-Lo fans who would in turn fill used-CD bins with the
product. Somehow, that would have been a fitting end to this sorry
chapter.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31
(in 51 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.16
(in 52,894 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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