Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,001
Written 12/7/02, Revised 2/23/09
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Buy it... only if you require every John Debney entry in the genre of
predictable, workmanlike techno-action parody.
Avoid it... if you expect the combination of overlapping material by Debney and
Christophe Beck (some of which rejected) to form a strongly distinct, overarching
personality.
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| Debney |
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| Beck |
The Tuxedo: (John Debney/Christophe Beck) The fiscal success of
Jackie Chan flicks in the early 2000's had been well-documented, often defying mixed
reviews with predictable popular affection. Anytime you can conjure up a scenario in
which a Chan character, an innocent man in the wrong place at the wrong time, has to
burst out of a refrigerator and kick someone in the head (all in one graceful split
second move), then you've got yourself a concept that's ready to pile up the grosses.
In 2002's The Tuxedo, Chan is again thrust into the worlds of comedy and
science fiction technology, this time with Jennifer Love Hewitt in tow. As a
chauffeur turned secret agent by accident (through the use of a magical black belt
tuxedo straight from James Bond's MI6 laboratories), he is placed into the familiar
position of kicking unsuspecting fools in painful places. In this case, he does it
with the music of two talented composers rooting him on. While there were plenty of
conflicting reports about the circumstances of the shared credit for the music for
The Tuxedo, the most reliable sources have indicated that Christophe Beck
wrote and recorded a full score for the film only to see veteran parody composer John
Debney hired to spice up several portions of the soundtrack with his usual eclectic
sense of genre-bending flair. Ultimately, the music by Beck and Debney would share
screen time, merging to form a somewhat functional techno-action score despite
occasional discrepancies in style and substance. It's a score that meets all your
expectations for an undemanding Jackie Chan action flick, with music that was
produced on both a moderate budget and the backbone of several creative electronic
samplings. One of the most interesting aspects of the Varèse Sarabande album
for The Tuxedo is the inclusion of cues written by both composers for the same
scenes, giving the listener a rare opportunity to compare the works on one commercial
product. The fact that their endeavors are largely indistinguishable must have given
pause to the producers of the film once Debney's material had been placed. Wasting
money on needless re-writes is, while a studio habit, still a shame. Both composers
employed the services of the Hollywood Studio Symphony for the project, and they also
used nearly identical electronic samplings to spike the nearly constant action
material with techno-spy flavor.
Debney was obviously more of a known commodity in the film scoring
world, and his electronics here sound very similar (if not perhaps a bit heightened)
to those in his other action comedy scores of the era, beginning with
Inspector
Gadget and running through
Cats & Dogs. In fact, much of the replacement
music for
The Tuxedo is a simple extension of the hip elements from
Cats &
Dogs. There aren't any spectacular orchestra-only cues, even at the film's most
exciting moments, and thematic development is kept at a minimum. The finale cue by
Debney does offer an attempt at a blazing orchestral crescendo (first heard in
"Putting on Tux"), but it unfortunately disintegrates into a mush of electronics.
Beck's music is very similar in that its orchestral moments never achieve musical
cohesiveness, but suffice to add enough stimulation to the scenes to accommodate what
people really went to the film to see: Chan kicking people in the head. The
soundtrack is, most importantly, extremely predictable and generic, and it continued
a trend of substandard film projects for Debney specifically. His potential as "the
next major composer in Hollywood" had been written about to no end, but his career
continued well into the 2000's to be stuck in a rut with ridiculous projects such as
this one. This score simply offers nothing new, nothing unique, and certainly nothing
to get excited about. Even if you enjoy the haphazard, frantic and large orchestral
and electronic ramblings heard in similar scores by Debney, there may not be enough
interesting material here to make the short album worth purchasing. The presentation
of the scores on the album starts and ends with Debney's music, and Beck's
contribution begins with his pedestrian main theme (still a highlight) while his
other material occupies the middle half of the album. Only two tracks are
particularly distinct; the first is "Jimmy's Tux," in which Debney and a remix artist
take his theme for the film and add some dialogue into a suite of surprisingly
engaging and fun listening. The deep drum loops in that track are nearly identical to
those used by Eric Serra in
The Fifth Element. The second cue of interest is
"Superhuman," for which Beck explores a short imitation of David Arnold's techno-Bond
style. Appropriately, the album concludes with the James Brown song "Get Up."
Overall,
The Tuxedo is a tired and forgettable project featuring at least one
composer who was spinning his wheels.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
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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