Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,396
Written 8/24/99, Revised 4/7/07
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Buy it... only if you are the world's most absolute, #1 John Debney
fan and have no other goal in life than to collect all of his
promotional releases.
Avoid it... if Debney's competent, but anonymous and predictable
writing for light comedies and romances borders on being frustratingly
pointless for you.
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| Debney |
Lost and Found: (John Debney) With studio
inspiration from There's Something About Mary and the requirement
that audiences actually believe that David Spade could play a romantic
lead in a somewhat responsible role, it's hard to imagine who on earth
thought Lost and Found would be a success. It was thankfully a
flop for Warner Brothers, proving that the truly terrible script should
have been nailed to a cross and displayed outside the studio to
discourage others from submitting or accepting similar trash. The
premise of the plot involves Spade as a restaurant owner (with
completely unrealistic behavior for the role) who lives in an apartment
complex where old ladies play strip poker. He falls in love with a
neighboring, French cellist --what was Sophie Marceau thinking?-- and
decides to win her affections by stealing her adorable little dog and
letting the woman panic just long enough before returning it to her and
playing the role of hero. Yeah, what a dick. Time for Marceau to slip
again into the roll of Bond villain and cut off his testicles. But alas,
the film actually took itself seriously, and to that end it was mocked
and ridiculed into obscurity. It is precisely this kind of questionable,
cliched film that composer John Debney has made a career out of scoring.
His start to 1999 was all the evidence necessary to prove that point,
writing music for My Favorite Martian, Inspector Gadget,
Lost and Found, and Dick all within a few months. He would
salvage his year by beginning his transition to major action and horror
scores with End of Days in the last month of 1999. His music for
Lost and Found would be a middle-of-the-road entry in the year,
playing it much safer than any of the aforementioned scores. It's
because of this total anonymity that Debney's succeeds so well in the
industry, just pumping out these mundane scores, and Lost and
Found is as predictable as they come.
If you've heard enough John Debney light comedy,
animation, or romance music, from his early ventures all the way through
The Ant Bully in 2006, you clearly know that these scores all
sound alike after a while. While never truly effortless, Debney seems to
be able to walk into a recording studio a few weeks after receiving an
assignment and record competent music without breaking a sweat. One has
to wonder what he thinks about all of these terrible films he has to
watch in order to write music for them. The only thing you can do with a
score like
Lost and Found is determine if there's anything... any
tiny snippet of unique character, theme, or instrumentation to separate
it from the mass of similar work from the composer. In the case of the
concurrent
My Favorite Martian and
Inspector Gadget,
Debney managed to do that and create music that you might actually be
able to remember the next day. With
Lost and Found there is
absolutely nothing --not a single minute of music-- that you will recall
clearly even five minutes after you finish hearing the score in its
entirety. It is the absolute definition of auto-pilot Debney filler
material. A light orchestra prances through delightfully fluffy themes
with some of the woodwind and chopping string spunk of Rachel Portman
music. The pace picks up with more pronounced string rhythms over light
snare taps for scenes with the dog, and a piano and solo woodwind
provide soft and pleasant themes for the moments of romantic
interaction.
Lost and Found does indeed have a collection of
motifs, but they are so generic and predictable in Debney's style of
anonymous production that there's nothing remarkable about them to
mention. As a listening experience,
Lost and Found is a very
pleasing and easy score, never challenging, never loud, and never
unconventional in instrumentation. It was only released as a 26-minute
promotional item by Debney himself, as were most of his scores at the
time, though a case could easily be made that the score doesn't deserve
even that. Despite having no flaws, it seems frustratingly pointless.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For John Debney reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.33
(in 56 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.1
(in 49,960 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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