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Review of Something's Gotta Give (Hans Zimmer/Various)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you appreciate Alan Silvestri's usual, airy
romanticism for similar films, because despite his late departure from
this film, the replacement score from Hans Zimmer (and company) sounds
remarkably similar to the former composer's equivalent style.
Avoid it... if you seek a substantial or professional presentation of the score, because the long-standing bootlegs of Something's Gotta Give contain rough edits and sound effects by necessity.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
Something's Gotta Give: (Hans Zimmer/Various) In
one of his later roles as an egotistical playboy, Jack Nicholson is a
music and magazine executive with a taste for much younger women in
Something's Gotta Give. His world is thrown upside down by a
heart attack, however, and in the process of recuperating at the
Hamptons beach home of his young lover's mother, he clashes with and
eventually falls for the older woman, the film's dynamo played by Diane
Keaton. The complicated love triangle expands to include sassy input
from an impressive supporting cast, though Something's Gotta Give
is best remembered for a Keaton performance that garnered several major
awards nominations. Only marginally impressed critics wrote off the 2003
film as a typical genre entry from writer, director, and producer Nancy
Myers, though the split distribution of Something's Gotta Give by
Columbia and Warner Brothers yielded outstanding fiscal success (it's
rare for lightweight romantic comedies to gross over $250 million,
especially when up against major franchise hits concurrently in
theatres). Myers' habit of relying upon shaky instincts when it comes to
the music in her films caused her and many others much trauma in the
last days of assembling this picture. Her typical reliance upon a
variety of pop tunes of various vintages led to two separate soundtrack
compilation albums for Something's Gotta Give (one from each
studio), but no score album. Myers' productions to this point, from the
Father of the Bride films to What Women Want, had been
handled by Alan Silvestri, often with decent results. Unfortunately, her
tendency to replace score recordings with songs often diminished the
impact of Silvestri's music in such films, and when she reportedly threw
out his music for Something's Gotta Give at the last minute, she
was left in search of a new collaborator. She found one in Hans Zimmer
or, as it should be more accurately noted, Zimmer and his plethora of
assistant composers. Just at the moment when Zimmer and longtime
associate Jay Rifkin went to court over their joint Media Ventures
outfit, Something's Gotta Give landed on the composer at the last
minute. Despite receiving full screen credit for the score, Zimmer
utilized several of his Media Ventures underlings for additional music,
including Ramin Djawadi, James Dooley, James S. Levine, Trevor Morris,
Blake Neely, and Heitor Pereira. Even veteran Christopher Young was
brought in to write and record a couple of last minute cues.
Something's Gotta Give had more music supervisors and editors
than productions twice its size, though Zimmer's last-minute
coordination efforts led to subsequent collaborations with Myers
(including The Holiday and It's Complicated, the latter
another album-prohibitive mess).
Surprisingly, the resulting score for Something's Gotta Give, albeit short, is quite cohesive and likable. It's more listenable in its melodic and orchestral consistency that Zimmer and company's later music for Myers, similar in terms of feathery touch to Silvestri's What Women Want (but without the magical choral effects). What Silvestri recorded for Something's Gotta Give is unknown, as is the extent and exact material by Young, though the music from Zimmer's score that has long circulated in the bootleg market is better than you may expect. A moderate orchestral ensemble is joined by acoustic guitar and piano solos for most of its length, sometimes utilizing synthetic keyboarding or Parisian-inspired romantic elements. Most of the score is carried by exuberant ensemble string and woodwind performances, however, conveying an innocuous though adequately unique theme (established at the outset of the film) over the course of the entire score's duration. The bouncy, airy demeanor of these passages will delight any vintage Rachel Portman enthusiast, while the acoustic guitar performances by Pereira are as attractive here as in subsequent equivalent works. The brief "Remember Me" cue featuring Pereira on the only commercially available track for Something's Gotta Give is a thematic highlight (and pads out the bootleg), but not really representative of the soothing orchestral nature of the rest of the score. Martin Tillman's credited cello solos don't seem to make much impact on the score, with no specific cues really highlighted by the instrument. Light jazz cues with loungey saxophone and percussion sprinkled throughout serve as source-like material. Some of the most impressive moments in this work are the dramatic cues of resonance for deeper strings, as at the conclusion of the ninth track on the score's bootlegs. Those 26-minute presentations are nothing more than a rip of the DVD's rear channels, though unlike many such amateur attempts to isolate most of the music, the assembly of material from Something's Gotta Give is actually quite well handled. Edits are as neatly executed as possible (only the thirteenth and sixteenth tracks suffer from gain or splice issues) and, although about half of the cues have minor ambient effects, these sounds are usually limited to the blowing of wind, pattering of rain, crashing of waves, or distant crowd noise of a public beach. As such, the music's easy-going personality is arguably enhanced by these sounds in some of the tracks. It's a rare day that anyone will approve of some ambient noise from the film on a score album, but here it works in all but two or three tracks. Among its peers, the bootleg for Something's Gotta Give is equal to that of What Women Want and is a step above Zimmer and associates' subsequent two scores for Myers. Now, if only someone could teach her how to respect veteran composers, the industry would need a few less antacid pills. ****
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 26:03
NOTES & QUOTES:
No consistent packaging exists for the bootleg variants.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from Something's Gotta Give are Copyright © 2004, (Bootlegs) and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 4/5/10 (and not updated significantly since). |
