Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,876
Written 3/19/10
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Buy it... if you'd be amused by hearing Hans Zimmer humorously
force a touch of Ennio Morricone out of his electronics for this airy,
zippy comedy score of surprisingly European tilt.
Avoid it... if only 17 minutes of Zimmer's likable, but not
spectacular synthetic music on album cannot justify a remainder from his
assistants even though the soundtrack is surprisingly cohesive as a
whole.
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| Zimmer |
Younger & Younger: (Hans Zimmer/Alex Wurman) An
arthouse film from Bagdad Cafe director Percy Adlon that debuted
during the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, Younger & Younger went
largely unnoticed in the mainstream despite a stereotypically eccentric
performance by Donald Sutherland in the lead and a young Brendan Fraser
as his son. Their family owns an odd self storage facility in America
that has many quirks, from a mysterious old pipe organ deep within to a
collection of clients that spans all walks of life. Sutherland's
character runs the place as if it were an amusement park, treating his
customers as though they were royalty. When the loyal wife to whom he
has been unfaithful dies of a heart attack, he begins to suffer from
dementia that causes him to hallucinate and see progressively younger
versions of his wife. He eventually falls in love with her once again
(albeit with her apparition) and the tale concentrates on the wholesome
character interactions that accompany the main character's re-discovery.
The project remains one of the more obscure in composer Hans Zimmer's
career, especially among those works that were released commercially on
album. It wasn't uncommon for the ascending composer to take assignments
like Younger & Younger at the time, for he had proven a keen
ability to score such topics on minimal budgets by applying his
synthesizer arrays as a replacement for an orchestra. Ever since the
remarkably lively and organic-sounding Driving Miss Daisy caught
the attention of the industry, he was called upon to deliver similar
results. While obviously exhibiting a different cultural flavor than
that earlier success, Younger & Younger offers its film and
Zimmer collectors another opportunity to hear the composer generate a
significant amount of vivacious energy out of his usual, one-man
ensemble. He did receive some help on this production, though, with Alex
Wurman stepping in to provide some of the music oriented more towards
source usage. Wurman had been an assistant to Zimmer for several years,
contributing additional music to several of the composer's high-profile
scores of the early 1990's. He would go on to earn his greatest fame in
subsequent years for his music for the popular documentary March of
the Penguins. Together with another assistant, Bob Telson, original
music was penned for the Wurlitzer organ in the story. The coordination
of all of these contributions into one cohesive listening experience
needs commended even if the result isn't spectacular.
While the general sense of bright optimism in Zimmer's
tone for
Younger & Younger will remind listeners of
Driving
Miss Daisy,
I'll Do Anything, and
Green Card, the
score arguably has the most in common with the composer's later
As
Good As It Gets. There is a certain amount of lightly keyboarded
romance in
Younger & Younger that will remind collectors of
Zimmer's music of half a dozen other scores of this era, but the heart
of this particular work exists in a comically European comedy style that
sounds like an intriguing blend between Rachel Portman and Ennio
Morricone's light-footed ideas for Mediterranean locales. The lengthy
"Vorspiel" suite offers Zimmer at his most playful, likely paying
tribute to Morricone (with whom he has always had a fascination) with
sprightly rhythms, wild accordion, tapping percussion, plucked synthetic
strings, and an alternation between saxophone and traditional woodwind
tones common to the region. The latter half of this cue switches to
pompous string chops and faux xylophone under fake oboe (or clarinet...
they bleed together in the sampling process) similar to Portman's comedy
material of the 1990's. With extremely slow pacing, Zimmer's themes tend
to blend into the ambience of the instrumentation, though the same ideas
in the opening suite are carried over into the other composers'
contributions. Wurman's material is intermingled on the product but
maintains both Zimmer's instrumental tone and his themes, so much so
that many casual listeners may not notice a difference. Zimmer's
recordings do seem a bit fuller, though, especially in the synthetic
vocal backing of the main theme at the end of "Roses," the accelerated
simulated plucking in the middle of "Lazy Afternoon," and the saxophone
sound over an
As Good As It Gets-like movement late in "Ghosts in
Love." In the material written or arranged by Wurman, "My Organ" will
remind you of your local carousel and a Latin influence yielding to
eerie simulated vocals highlights "Disco!" The Telson piece "Show Me
Your Face" receives a melancholy vocal performance and a lengthy
instrumental reprise. Interestingly, all of the music credited to Wurman
and Telson contain instrumental or thematic connections to Zimmer's
material, so outside of the obvious "Vorspiel" at the outset of the
album, you'll have difficulty determining any break in the cohesive
listening experience. Sure, the score definitely sounds cheap in some of
its later tracks on the product, but the pizzazz of Zimmer's explicitly
credited 17 minutes of music easily carries the rest. Don't approach
this soundtrack with high expectations and you might be rewarded by
hearing Zimmer do what he occasionally loves to do: humorously force
Morricone out of his electronics.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.85
(in 128 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.96
(in 299,193 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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