Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,861
Written 3/18/10
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Buy it... if you need to improve your mood by filling your
environment with a safely conservative, mainstream blend of soft rock,
subtle blues, and heartfelt woodwind performances.
Avoid it... if you require your scores to move with a distinct
narrative progression during the listening experience, because I'll
Do Anything tends to harmlessly sink into the background during its
pleasant exploration of those genres.
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| Zimmer |
I'll Do Anything: (Hans Zimmer) It had always been
the dream of writer, director, and producer James L. Brooks to bring a
musical to the big screen, and buoyed by his success with Terms of
Endearment and Broadcast News in the 1980's, he attempted his
song and dance drama titled I'll Do Anything in 1994. The topic
of familial reconciliation between a struggling actor and his young,
estranged daughter carried the heart of Brooks' narrative, but his knack
for a touch of satire in his work (evident in his decades of affiliation
with "The Simpsons" on TV and film) caused the better half of I'll Do
Anything to take aim at the movie industry itself. Jabs at the
behind-the-scenes melodrama in Hollywood were greeted with enthusiasm
due to Brooks' intelligent packaging of the industry's less glamorous
machinations, though the father/daughter story with Nick Nolte in the
lead was largely panned. Several musical numbers littered the first cuts
of the picture, with the actors performing their own singing parts to
varying levels of embarrassment. The songs were provided by the unlikely
combination of Prince, Sinead O'Connor, and Carole King, with Hans
Zimmer's underscore serving as a somewhat anonymous bridge between the
numbers. The style of the songs was safely generic in the light rock
genre, bordering at times on the children's genre as well. Zimmer was in
the process of getting much practice in the art of adapting the melodies
and tone of musical numbers into his underscores, though the extent of
his efforts to incorporate the specific melodies and style of the songs
originally slated to be heard in I'll Do Anything remains
unknown. That's because test audiences were less than thrilled with
early edits of the film, and in order to save the $40 million
production, Brooks was forced to remove all but one of the songs.
Problems with the flow of the story and an incapability of some of the
actors to sing were cited as possible reasons. The director had to
reassemble the crew and re-shoot a handful of scenes to cover the
removed songs, turning almost all of I'll Do Anything into a
standard drama. While the original recordings of the discarded songs
were never released to the public, most of them were eventually
repackaged by the individual artists for subsequent albums of their own.
The fate of Brooks' film wasn't much brighter after the edits, though,
failing to win any of the widespread acclaim that his other major
projects tended to receive.
Despite all of its production difficulties,
I'll Do
Anything did represent the initial entry in a fruitful relationship
between Brooks and Zimmer. Their first three collaborations feature
either the composer's light-footed, aloof tone of contemporary sounds or
a safely acoustic environment, this opening entry best incorporating
both. Unlike Zimmer's synthetically-dominated ventures in this genre
during the early 1990's,
I'll Do Anything is defined by its
organic textures. Many of his standard loops and keyboarded elements
carry over, but the score's charm is rooted in the many live soloists.
Most of the personality from these performers comes from a wide variety
of woodwinds, a refreshing circumstance with which to cleanse yourself
of Zimmer's later mainstream scores of minimal instrumental nuance of an
acoustic nature. In its contemporary parts, there are shades of Alan
Silvestri's equivalent sound back then, though the slight soul
influences that emerge in "Burke" are closer to
Point of No
Return and
The Preacher's Wife territory. The straight
orchestral statements of melody (with either real or sampled string
section... it's difficult to tell in this one) extend a tone of
innocence and sincerity to match Jerry Goldsmith's concurrent output.
The lonely saxophone solos over distinctly 1980's keyboarding is pure
vintage Zimmer, however, as easy as anything the composer wrote in those
years. Bluesy jazz elements blend frequently into Zimmer's accelerated
looped percussion for a safely urban feel of optimism. Occasional
acoustic guitar contributions foreshadow
Spanglish. By "Cathy,"
all of these ingredients finally present harmonious statements in
satisfying unison. Two clearly evident themes run throughout
I'll Do
Anything, the first introduced in "Matt" and reprised sparingly
thereafter. Both this idea and one that eventually congeals in "Jeannie"
seem to represent the two leads, the latter reminiscent of a famous
melody from
The Sound of Music. The themes really aren't the
major attraction of
I'll Do Anything, though; instead, a very
likable ambience and engaging personality in the score's fluid movement
is aided by Zimmer's usual arrangement of lengthy suites for the album
release. The lone song remaining in the film, King's "You Are the Best,"
is evidence of why the film didn't screen well. It tries so hard to be
cute that it's obnoxious at best. On the whole, Zimmer's work for
I'll Do Anything is more substantial and varied than either
As
Good As It Gets or
Spanglish, though lacking the consistency
of volume in the later scores. It's conservatively mainstream but absent
any significant flaws.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.85
(in 128 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.96
(in 299,193 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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