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Review of Monte Carlo (Michael Giacchino)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you continue to adore Henry Mancini's 1960's comedy jazz, a sound emulated with great affection and technical precision in this lightweight affair.

Avoid it... if you can only handle that dated Mancini style for short periods, because Michael Giacchino goes overboard with forty cues of short, haphazard parody tributes on a static, tedious album presentation.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Monte Carlo: (Michael Giacchino) Movies like Monte Carlo officially exist to fleece teenage girls of money, but their unofficial reason for existence is the torture of boys and men. It's because of the behavior witnessed in this movie that radical Muslims declare the West full of infidels and launch their jihad activities. It's even a difficult topic for most of the infidels, catering to the whims of teenage girls and their insufferable tendency to snipe at each other for no apparently good reason. Three such little twits from America end up on an awful trip to Paris where the Selena Gomez character is mistaken for a princess and spends the remainder of the movie intertwined with the circumstances of her famous look-a-like. The other girls tag along to Monte Carlo and enjoy the posh environment until they are eventually discovered and chased. Rest assured, however, that instead of being incarcerated and sued to oblivion as they should be, the Americans end up getting away with the charade and manage to hook some suitable young men for (and hopefully of) good measure. With a plotline as vacuous as that, it's no surprise that critics reacted negatively to the flick, but perhaps the more interesting revelation is the relatively poor box office gross to go along with those tepid reviews. Seeing that Monte Carlo only broke about even in theatrical returns, perhaps there's hope for the future of humanity. Teaming with director Tom Bezucha once again after The Family Stone is composer Michael Giacchino, whose career has quickly skyrocketed to fantastic levels since that 2005 score but who must have decided to reward the collaboration as a way of taking a stroll on the easy side for an assignment. Through some of his best known works for the big screen, Giacchino has always seemed to have an affinity for vintage jazz, ranging from the big band sounds of the 1920's to the loungey atmosphere of the 1960's, and Monte Carlo gave him the opportunity to unleash his talents at both ends of that genre without restraint. Undoubtedly, the score was meant as something of a parody, never once really attempting to explore serious dramatic tones in an otherwise spritely and optimistic exposition of short jazzy bursts of flair. The shameless emulation of Henry Mancini's 1960's sound is extremely successful in a technical sense; Giacchino at the very least proves himself impressively proficient at paying tribute to Mancini's recognizable music of yesteryear. Whether the inconsequential score charms you or sends you seeking an alternative with even a trace of testosterone is another matter.

Diversions like The Family Stone seem to represent the least popular Giacchino music on the market during his first decade of film score writing, and Monte Carlo is likely to appeal to Mancini fans specifically while finding less success with those desiring the composer's own musical voice. There are structural presentations of thematic ideas in Monte Carlo that will remind of Giacchino's prior comedy music, but the parody is anonymous enough in style that a amateur film music listener may not be able to tell if this Mancini love-fest came from Giacchino, Marc Shaiman, Christopher Lennertz, or half a dozen other composers. On the positive side, Giacchino does really capture that vintage comedy jazz spirit with technical mastery. His applications of various saxophones, muted brass, and fluttery woodwinds are extremely adept. He uses an acoustic guitar and piano (sometimes together) for the warmer portions of the score, highlighting certain conversation scenes with a slightly more contemporary tone. Electric bass and accordion are added as appropriate accents, the latter still a bit challenging to tolerate but fitting with the lazy brass swings and tapped metallic percussion. As a summary of the straight Mancini tribute portions of the score, "Almost Everyone is Happy" is a solid representation. The downside to Monte Carlo is obvious, however. Unless you are a clearly acknowledged fan of this specific Mancini sound (or perhaps an equal enthusiast of the older, larger ensemble jazz), this music will be as obnoxious to you as the movie itself. There is a thematic core to the score that follows the three girls through their adventures, but they are so saturated with the same comedy tone that some listeners may not find much need to segregate them for any purpose. The presentation of the music is extremely static, with nary a moment of dissonant troubles, and the snapshot succession of the typically short cues (the majority of them run at or below a minute in length) does become tedious after twenty such little vignettes. There is no substantial narrative arc, causing the music to never develop from any starting point to a climax or resolution. It is Mancini sonic wallpaper from start to finish, and with 48 very short tracks on the album presentation, it gets old fast. A nasty piece of distortion at 1:18 into "Pairing Up" is a mastering blunder. Giacchino does arrange and/or save some of the longer performances for near the end of the product, and perhaps the album would have benefitted from a slimming down to 25 minutes and combining of those merged highlights with the two end credits songs heard in the film that are absent from this score-only album ("Who Says" by Selena Gomez & the Scene is a particularly notable omission). Beware the tedious cuteness of this one.  **

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 48:07

• 1. Graceful Exit (0:37) • 2. What Mom Would Have Wanted (1:00) • 3. Its Not Magic (0:58) • 4. Feeling Eiffel (0:59) • 5. Grace Under Pressure (1:01) • 6. Mirror Coincidence (0:56) • 7. The Seduction of Paris (0:58) • 8. Along For the Ride (1:09) • 9. Seizing the Moment (0:30) • 10. The Full Monte Carlo (0:50) • 11. One Suite Deal (0:37) • 12. Junk in the Trunks (0:56) • 13. Ball In (0:53) • 14. Pairing Up (2:44) • 15. A Little Horse (s'il vous) Play (0:47) • 16. Of Another Color (0:53) • 17. Dressing Up and Dressing Down (1:05) • 18. Jazz Cafe (1:18) • 19. Staying Classy (0:54) • 20. Hotel Keys (1:49)

• 21. You're Goin' Places, Kid (2:11) • 22. Chasing Emma (0:31) • 23. Have a Nice Trip (0:43) • 24. Megsmerized (0:43) • 25. Cordelia Arrives (1:30) • 26. Cordelia's Not So Suite (1:09) • 27. Time to Go (1:27) • 28. Missing Links (1:21) • 29. Return Engagement (1:49) • 30. Protection and (Room) Service (0:27) • 31. Just Stay Here (0:48) • 32. I Don't Want to Lose You (0:37) • 33. It's Too Much (0:50) • 34. Just a Regular Girl (0:44) • 35. Almost Everyone is Happy (1:03) • 36. Separate Ways (3:01) • 37. Grace Be With You (1:21) • 38. Of Another Color (Extended Version) (2:49) • 39. Making Light (3:36) • 40. Grace's Theme (0:12)

NOTES & QUOTES:

The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information about the score or film.

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