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Artwork copyright (c) 2003 Universal Studios; review copyright (c) 2003 James Southall
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BRUCE ALMIGHTY Pleasant
snippet of heavenly music
In what must be one of the surprise hits of the year, Jim Carrey and Morgan
Freeman star in Bruce Almighty, in which God (Freeman) gets so fed up
with one man's complaints about how he runs things that he bestows him (Carrey)
with divine powers for a day, to see how he would cope. Well. It's
from director Tom Shadyac, who previously gave us the masterpieces Ace
Ventura: Pet Detective and Patch Adams, not to mention Dragonfly. Varese Sarabande's soundtrack CD is unusual for the label in that it features
only a fairly short suite of score, and a host of non-original songs from the
movie. The songs are an odd bunch, from Joan Osborne's excellent "One
of Us" to the posthumous Elvis hit "A Little Less Conversation"
(I'm sure there are those who wonder whether Elvis had divine powers himself) to
Fatboy Slim's "The Rockafeller Skank", which is certainly
uncontaminated by quality. Film music fans will no doubt be interested to
hear that it contains something by John Barry as a sample, though I've listened
to it a couple of times and haven't heard it yet. Debney's score is the kind of heavenly stuff you might expect from the
movie. It's all incredibly sweet and liable to make a trip to the dentist
in order, but it's attractive stuff, and actually being presented as a 15-minute
suite is probably a good way of doing it. The main theme is
disconcertingly similar to Michael Kamen's glorious Band of Brothers main
title, and this gives a useful exercise in comparing a first-rate film composer
with a journeyman. Whereas Kamen's theme is a perfect model of
inspirational yet restrained scoring, Debney's is pure schmaltz and just goes
too far. As well as the obvious Kamen rip-off, there are a few James Hornerisms that
are quite blatant too - not a case of taking a melody this time - but in
orchestration, it's presumably a case of trying to emulate the success of The
Rocketeer or something. Debney could probably write this sort of stuff before breakfast, and despite
the similarities to other things, the snippet of his score we hear is never less
than pleasant to listen to. 15 minutes of score is probably not enough to
satisfy Debney fans, and seven diverse songs is probably not going to satisfy
that audience, so I'm not entirely sure who will be attracted to the album, but
it's decent enough. Buy this CD by clicking here!
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