A disappointing array of score music profligates an otherwise funny film.
Review by Matt Cummings
If audiences didn't quite respond to January's comedy caper Mortdecai (ok, they frankly hated it), it might have had something to do with Actor Johnny Depp's "Here we go again" approach to the titular character that kept audiences away. While I loved the film's zaniness, I was wondering whether the soundtrack by Composers Mark Ronson and Geoff Zanelli had anything to do with that experience. After listening to it, I can say an emphatic 'no.'
The problem here is that the score is more set-up music and less big riffs that help to identify the actors or push the scene further. Take something like Hong Kong: you must go nearly 3 minutes into the 4:25 track before finding anything remotely like a big theme or a connecting melody. Once you get there, it's all 60's schlock and totally fun, but the wait is almost not worth the time. Johanna does much the same, setting in motion the definite feeling of meh that permeates an album with some true flashes of greatness, but settles in for melodies of mediocrity. The Farmer's Daughter, The Painted Lady May Be In Play finally gets us somewhere, before again cutting things too short.
Spinoza, Los Angeles, and Georgina finally FINALLY get us to a good place, giving us the musical backbone of the film. When Heart's a Liar (featuring Rose Elinor Dougal) arrives, it's fun 60's retro, but it's something better suited on XM's old channel On the Rocks than on this CD. Curiously Interspersed with Erotic Dreams is perhaps the strongest track of the set - giving us pure Austin Powers in only 1:28 - but Open Your Balls might be its funniest. It's all Russian chants, and without the voices its chorus could work in any spy film; but it gets back to the main theme a third of the way through. Again, it makes for a nice experience with Dreams.
As we move towards the middle of the score, we get Questionable Attack, Jock which Ronson dials up with good syncopated drum beats, Hammond Organ, and trumpets pushing the chorus. Then it's The Duke's Funeral, which reminds vibes a lot of Depp's Dark Shadows. But then The Heist arrives, which is merely set up music and tones, along with Con Fuego which sounds more like a ringtone you might get with your new phone. It's well-produced as is Well Spun Rumour, but you have to go over 1 minute into things before you get a great trumpet theme that immediately goes quiet and flattens the track.
The Auction provides us with a textbook explanation of why this score fails: there's moments of greatness lost just as soon as the track gets going. We literally can feel it begin to soar before being forced down with more random set ups. Luckily, Epilogue arrives to cheer our mood, with flutes, syncopated drums, and trumpets strutting their stuff until Balls returns for another great moment. Had the score ended there, I might have been more forgiving in my review, but In the Bathub arrives with the thud, not even serving as the film's true end credits music.
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