james horner

Description

This one´s for @apxstitch. Thanks for the request! :-) A story about the self-discovery of an average, modern American family, Dad is another lesson on how to and how not to take care of your parents once they reach the age of senility. A busy banker in the big city is forced to take leave to attend to his ailing parents and the "coming together" experience helps heal years of distant relationships and the story shows the audience about how older folks can learn to cope with their illnesses and other age-related problems. The film dances between the realms of drama and comedy, perhaps to a fault that it cannot recover from. Written and directed by Gary David Goldberg, Dad would be his first feature film after years of directing TV's "Family Ties" show. Critical reaction to Dad jumped on this inexperience and often related the problems with the film to the problems typical to sitcom comedies. All of the actors in the film would go on to better representations of their characters in subsequent films (especially Jack Lemmon in the Grumpy Old Men movies), and the same could arguably be said for composer James Horner as well. Best known for his adventure and high drama scores in the 1980's, both An American Tail and The Land Before Time would prepare Horner for these kind of syrupy human drama pictures that we would become associated with over the rest of his career. His association with Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment would come to play in Dad, and would lead to several similarly curious Horner projects in the following few years. Of his human drama efforts, Dad remains one of the more personable and enjoyable works, building a consistently easy-going listening experience around the foundation of one of Horner's very typical children's themes of the era. While Dad isn't exactly a children's film, Horner handles it as such with the sensibilities of his light touch and friendly instrumentation. Horner collectors familiar with Searching for Bobby Fischer and To Gillian on her 37th Birthday will recognize the scope of Dad immediately. While those other scores lay on the drama more heavily during their thematic performances, Dad remains in a more contemporary style. Horner's title theme is a merging of An American Tale ("Somewhere Out There" lives again!) and The Land Before Time, following usual chord progressions and alternating between performances of sweetness in strings and woodwinds that will remind listeners of Jerry Goldsmith's innocent themes of the years to come. In the opening tracks, as well as "Dad," Horner's title theme is accompanied by light rock elements, and in the latter track, Jay Gruska's arrangement of Horner's material allows the sax to carry the tune to much of the same degree as Goldsmith's Forever Young. Later in the score, this theme takes on a more strictly orchestral personality, culminating a "Goodbyes" cue that mirrors The Land Before Time in its string usage. The opening bars of "Taking Dad Home" feature perhaps the most explosive outburst of emotion, as heard during a pivotal sequence in the film during which Lemmon's character is literally carried out a hospital by his son (Ted Danson) with Hollywood flair (a moment that ruined the film for some critics, it might be added). The consistency of thematic variations makes Dad an easy and nearly uninterrupted experience. The one exception is "Mopping the Floor," Horner's lone comedy cue from the film, for which he switches to a wild bluegrass/jazz rhythm performed by bass string and steel drums with a catchy violin theme over the top. While some listeners might be turned off by this significant departure from the nonstop charm of the rest of the score, it is another one of those curious moments in Horner's career that you almost wish the composer would explore to a greater degree at some point (Field of Dreams the same year would also have a cue or two of this kind of material). Among Horner's more subtle work, Dad stands up to nearly the leve...