1920’s sound, weirdness, and classical music make for a unique yet forgettable soundtrack
Time weighted score: 3.45/5.00
Track weighted score: 3.28/5.00
Year: 1988
Composer: James Horner
The seniors return to Earth to visit their relatives. Will they all decide to go back to the planet where no one grows old, or will they be tempted to stay back on Earth?
It’s fun, silly, and unusual. What more can you want (except for thematic consistency and quality)
| 1) Main Title (2 min 25 sec). Rating: 4.5 / 5 |
| 2) Reunion (2 min 15 sec). Rating: 3 / 5 |
| 3) Good Friend (3 min 18 sec). Rating: 3 / 5 |
| 4) Taking Bernie To The Beach (4 min 33 sec). Rating: 3.5 / 5 |
| 5) Scuba Dive (1 min 54 sec). Rating: 2 / 5 |
| 6) First Break-In (2 min 56 sec). Rating: 3 / 5 |
| 7) Basketball Swing (7 min 00 sec). Rating: 3.5 / 5 |
| 8) Cutting The Cocoon (2 min 13 sec). Rating: 2.5 / 5 |
| 9) Sharing Our Brains Out (2 min 44 sec). Rating: 2.5 / 5 |
| 10) Growing Old (1 min 56 sec). Rating: 3.5 / 5 |
| 11) Jack’s Future (2 min 44 sec). Rating: 3.5 / 5 |
| 12) Joe’s Gift (8 min 07 sec). Rating: 3.5 / 5 |
| 13) Remembrances – The Break-In (8 min 26 sec). Rating: 3.5 / 5 |
| 14) Taking Phil (3 min 09 sec). Rating: 2.5 / 5 |
| 15) Rescue – The Ascension (11 min 31 sec). Rating: 3.5 / 5 |
| 16) Returning Home (6 min 08 sec). Rating: 5 / 5 |
I don’t know how to feel about this soundtrack. There are elements of 1920s-style jazz, basketball music, and even what sounds like a reference to the Harlem Globetrotters. And it’s got a traditional orchestral sound too, for the most part. It’s lively and generic at the same time. It’s got quality and boredom. It’s an enigma…
I’ve never seen either the original nor this sequel I decided to randomly listen to. I didn’t know what to expect, but I somehow expected more. The soundtrack is unique in that I feel like it lacks depth, yet very clearly there is a lot of depth and detail behind it. Perhaps what I am associating with “depth” is more accurately just a more cohesive sound.
Yet, it’s not bad! It’s just not great. There are some highlights. I really like the piece “Basketball Swing.” Coming out of nowhere, it introduces some excellent vintage Roaring Twenties flair. You really get into this piece and enjoy what it has to offer, but then it kind of swings at you, and not in a good way. The end of “Basketball Swing” kind of makes it go from great to just good, as it peters off into an almost Philip Glass-style sound with ultra minimalism. Not only is it a complete change in shift, but it doesn’t really work.
There is a full ensemble orchestra here, as you would expect from a Horner score (I say that, and yet Titanic exists in a very electronic form). But the orchestra more often than not breaks into the realm of weird and uncanny. Soft, pleasant strings merge into unusual orchestrations almost at will. The jazz itself is lovely, and honestly that’s the main highlight. Horner proves that he can write swinging and hip-rocking music with the best of them.
But this is very much 1980s-style James Horner. What I mean by that is that he has pieces that are incredibly long, and that hurts the review. You see, if we review tracks in a vacuum, we can think of them as pieces we’d want to listen to on a long car ride. There really isn’t a lot of valuable substance in between the beneficial stuff. If I declare the themes and melodies to be enjoyable, the bits and pieces in between really aren’t of note.
Just like this review, this soundtrack doesn’t really have a lot of substance.
Modern soundtrack review (under construction) 
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