Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #228
Written 2/15/98, Revised 3/12/06
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Buy it... only if you are a James Newton Howard completist, in
which case the bootleg with The Trigger Effect may be a better
promo/bootleg to seek.
Avoid it... if you are only a casual fan of Howard's music, or are
sickened by blatantly syrupy romantic comedy scores.
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| Howard |
My Best Friend's Wedding: (James Newton Howard)
It's a scenario in which we're absolutely sure how the film is going to
resolve itself, but My Best Friend's Wedding succeeds in its
ability defy those expectations. A splitting pair of college lovers
decide that if they're both still single at age 28, they'll get married.
The girlfriend, a famous food critic played by Julia Roberts, waits to
hear from Dermot Mulroney as their birthdays approach, but when he does
call her, it's to let her know that he's marrying someone else a few
days before the deadline. Roberts' character, of course, sets out to
sabotage the wedding, and while this plotline may sound predictable,
P.J. Hogan's film isn't. The lead man's girlfriend isn't the ditzy
blonde we expect Cameron Diaz to be, nor is Roberts' lead as sympathetic
as we expect her to be. She gets down to some borderline criminal
sabotage before we know it, and thus takes the film down a path we least
expect. While deviating from the usual lines of romantic comedies that
fly through the theatres all the time, the score by composer James
Newton Howard plays along strictly familiar lines. It follows the comedy
score standards established by Rachel Portman and Alan Silvestri without
fail, and will likely make the elusive My Best Friend's Wedding
score on album an item far more enticing for fans of those other
composers than those who have compiled all of Howard's trademark
suspense and action scores in their collections. Interestingly,
recognition of Howard's work by the bodies that give out awards has been
lacking through the years, and yet this somewhat anomalous entry in his
career earned him both Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations at a
time when Hollywood was sucking up light romantic comedy music and AMPAS
specifically added a "Comedy/Musical Score" category in which to house
them. In that category, Howard's work here is deserving of recognition,
but won't surprise or impress you in the genre.
Howard's capabilities in the comedy genre may be
largely forgotten by film score collectors, but
My Best Friend's
Wedding is a capable, lovely, and understated score. It is indeed a
cross between the rhythmic moments of Rachel Portman's
Only You
and Alan Silvestri's
What Women Want, with the occasional
prancing rhythms of the former (performed, of course by jubilant
woodwinds) and the conservative thematic structure and synthetic chorus
of the latter. This music is as unoffensive as possible, venturing out
of the soft layers of alternating string and woodwind notes to spice up
a few cues with more ambitious, neoclassical, wedding-inspired cues. The
jealousy cue ("Crazy Jealous" or "You Were Jealous," depending on what
album you have) is marked by a gorgeous combination of majestic
orchestral theme, light synth effects and choir, while the "E-mail" cue
kicks up the Portman-like rhythm of deviance; despite the serious
connotations that the latter scene (among others) involves, Howard
sticks to straight innocence in his score, never allowing the film's
script to completely lose the comedy genre. The "Julianne Makes an
Entrance" cue kicks with a piano and chopping string rhythm mirrored in
Portman's
Addicted to Love. Thematically, there are some
pleasantly romantic moments in
My Best Friend's Wedding; the
choral effects in particular set this score apart, but its soft nature
(and inherently lower recording volume) makes it somewhat predictable
and potentially boring, even in it's short length. The score was only
released at the time of the film's release by Howard in the form of a
"for your consideration" promo, and it made the usual rounds in the
secondary market for about $50. A few years later, the score jumped
(with the volume issues resolved) to the bootleg market, with the suite
from the commercial album for
My Best Friend's Wedding added to
the end, as well as Howard's electronically-inclined music for
The
Trigger Effect (not a good listening combination) and a few bonus
cues from other Howard scores. On its own, the 24 minutes of
My Best
Friend's Wedding on the original promo will be a pleasant surprise
for collectors of the composer, but nothing more than that.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.4
(in 70 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36
(in 86,511 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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