Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #551
Written 6/10/03, Revised 6/19/18
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Buy it... if and only if you maintain a complete collection of Alan
Silvestri's works and want to hear the dated, light rock style that
guided his career before his consistent orchestral success.
Avoid it... if campy, contemporary pop and comedic jazz reminiscent
of the worst of 1980's romance don't float your boat, no matter the
composer.
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| Silvestri |
Romancing the Stone: (Alan Silvestri) A struggling
20th Century Fox took a chance on a relatively unknown director, Robert
Zemeckis, for their 1984 comedy adventure, Romancing the Stone, a
project that actor Michael Douglas had been strongly pushing for a few
years as a vehicle to prove his leading man potential. Kathleen Turner
joins him as a goofy novelist on a trek to South America to rescue her
kidnapped sister, the two slogging through jungles and swamps to foil
Danny DeVito in a comedic villain's role. Despite the fact that the film
was a cash cow for Fox, Romancing the Stone was plagued with
every imaginable post-production problem, from poor test audience
reactions to, ironically, a need to distinguish the film from the
concurrently released Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Zemeckis was frustratingly fired from the forthcoming production of
Cocoon and replaced with Ron Howard before Romancing the
Stone could even be finished. Perhaps the best thing to come out of
all that mess was the suggestion that Zemeckis visit with an aspiring
television composer, Alan Silvestri, at his house to see if his ideas
would match the style of music the producers were looking for. As
difficult as it is to imagine today, there was a time in 1983 when
Zemeckis couldn't find a composer to pair up with. So famous now is the
Zemeckis and Silvestri collaboration that the director's troubles
finding the right sound for Romancing the Stone make the project
noteworthy for film score enthusiasts without further note. To further
combat the competition (that pesky Indiana Jones film), the score for
Romancing the Stone was desired to be humorously campy and
feature contemporary appeal, with the amount of bulky orchestral action
held to a minimum. Silvestri, known professionally only because of his
work for the television show "CHIPS," impressed Zemeckis with his
easy-going, free-flowing style, and several of the ramblings of musical
ideas that Silvestri performed on the day that Zemeckis visited his
house turned out to win him the job. Unlike the more serious
competition, there was an effort to take Romancing the Stone and
its basic adventure story far into the realm of modern romantic
comedies, with dumb villains, unbelievable luck, and testy dialogue
between characters who end up, of course, falling in love against
unlikely odds. Silvestri's easy-going, funky, light rock music, with all
the appropriate drum pads, electric guitars, and associated tools of the
era, was a perfect match for this cinematic personality.
The style of Silvestri's work for
Romancing the
Stone is really an extension of generalized television show
mentality and instrumentation of the era. Light rock and jazzy rhythms
were the expected sound of such shows back then, and Silvestri had the
genre knocked. The contemporary keyboarding and synthetic percussion of
that genre was just a few steps away from the alterations Silvestri
would apply to it for the exotic locations in this film. The Vera Cruz
sequences have dorky, loungey instrumentation that you might have heard
on cruise ships in the Caribbean at the time, and it would be an insult
to native peoples if not for the fact that all the Caucasian characters
in the film are so ridiculous as well. Almost always moving with an
enthusiastic rhythm and synthesized, pseudo-jungle bounce, the score
resorts to stereotypical, urban saxophone performances for the romantic
scenes, its love theme the only recurring melody in the work. In fact,
if a cue in the score isn't too stereotypical of 1980's romance films,
then it's campy beyond a level of tolerance on album. The latter is
evident in the full-scale use of Alfred Newman's
How the West Was
Won in the prologue. The only remarkable action cues for the
moderate orchestral ensemble exist near the end of "The Gorge" and in
"Struggling for the Stone." Overall, it's a lightweight score compared
to Silvestri's other work for Zemeckis, even the forthcoming comedies,
and it cannot be said that
Romancing the Stone ages well.
Released officially for the first time on CD as part of the
Varèse Sarabande Club series in 2002, the score was aimed
primarily at hardcore film score collectors who, more than anything
else, were likely interested in hearing the fledgling evolution of
Silvestri's career. The music doesn't hold up as well as Howard Shore's
Big, which is a comparable genre score originally provided in the
same series of albums.
Romancing the Stone may appeal to
Silvestri completists despite its badly dated demeanor, especially with
its extra source and bonus cues, but there is little reason for much
appeal at a limited album price. At the time, given that 2002 product
eventually sold out, listeners were better served by the label's release
of
Cast Away, which included six minutes from this score as a
bonus. In 2017, La-La Land Records expanded the presentation, adding 12
rather meaningless minutes of music and remastering the score to give it
a wetter, more vibrant tone. Some of the additional music is redundant,
provided without transitions heard in the main presentation. Once again,
this score struggles to merit such attention on album, with a suite of
the late romance cues and perhaps some of the generic action material
more than sufficiently representing this tired time capsule.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Alan Silvestri reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.47
(in 43 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.33
(in 40,196 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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