Roman Polanski's seemingly rather pointless new version of Oliver Twist (the 365,099th screen adaptation of Charles Dickens's classic tale) saw the director forced to find a new composer after his recent regular collaborator Wojciech Kilar decided he wanted to concentrate on writing concert music and not work on films any more.  Needing to find someone who would be able to match Kilar's gifts for writing dark, serious music steeped in the traditions of the finest eastern European composers of the past, avoiding even the slightest hint of Hollywood schmaltz and sentiment, the natural choice was... Rachel Portman!?  Oh well - talk about going from one extreme to the other!

A comment frequently made about Portman is that all of her scores sound exactly the same.  I would refute that with some vigour - in truth, it's only about 97% of her scores that sound exactly the same.  Oliver Twist is resolutely part of that 97%.  It is utterly predictable from start to finish - bright, breezy wind themes accompanied by flowing strings, occasional interludes for vaguely comic clarinet solos, some darker moments being scored not with a wash of violins but (wait for it) a wash of celli and basses - etc.  In truth, I can barely imagine a score that would sound less appropriate for Oliver Twist (which is hardly the most cheerful of tales) but I haven't seen the film and, tempting though it is to pretend I have, I won't do that either, so I can't really comment on how it works in context.

As an album, it's perfectly lovely, as most of Portman's albums are.  In fairness to her, she does make an attempt to tackle the darker side of the story, but it all sounds a bit like a parody, almost a joke rather than a serious attempt to score it.  (One can't help but wonder in awe about Kilar's take on the film.)  Harsh though it may be to say it, Portman is really a one-trick pony, and that trick is writing bright, summery scores for bright, summery films.  For films that aren't bright and summery, she either ignores that fact and writes a bright, summery score anyway, or she tries something different, which rarely (if ever) works.  This falls into the former camp and is undeniably a very enjoyable album (though 20 minutes being taken out to avoid the extraordinary amount of repetition would make it even more enjoyable) nonetheless, and one her fans will fall in love with, I'm sure.