Just Married
Film released by 20th Century Fox
No score soundtrack available
Music clip 1, 1'05" (1.25Mb)
['marimba love theme']
Music clip 2, 0'34" (271Kb) [chaotic music,
taken here from DVD menu]
"There will always be this big fat elephant in the room with us."
BRIEF REVIEW
For what is essentially a post-American Pie teen comedy taken one step further, Shawn Levy's Just Married is quite a smoothe ride, balancing comedy with romance in a way that just tips it to the female audience without imasculating the men. Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy play Tom and Sarah Leezak, trying to keep their marriage together through the unlikely trials of honeymoon amidst a background of in-law pressure.
Chris Beck's by-now effortless economy with romantic comedy scores is executed with customary applomb, and oddly enough for a film like this, he has relatively few pop songs to work round. Indeed, more of the film is played without music than one would expect. However, Beck's score is allowed plenty of places to shine, and he works up the drammatic pressure by pinning together contrasting themes to underline the main characters' moods: a mischievious bouncy cue for any kind of sexual shenanigans [e.g. 17'19" nookie in the parents' house, 49'05" at the grotty pensione]; a variant style growing from it with Italian/flamenco flavours which becomes ever-more flamboyant [e.g. 1:07'27", 1:11'18" chaos, 1:14'58" hotel chase]; and a remarkably beautiful love theme [23:15" at the wedding; 27'15" version initially for piano; 1:18'29" despirited version after the honeymoon; 1:20'58" glimmer of light 'time to grow up'; tentative 1:23'03" the speech; 1:24'50" chirpy marimba-led version re-appears for reunion]. Both are subject to some appropriate variation according to the situation.
Webmaster's additional:
The DVD director/actor commentary mentions Beck during the wedding scene, complementing him on his 'marimba love theme'. Levy's following words are: "It's just magical. Chris Beck, my composer—just phenomenally talented." The "my composer" might sound overly posessive, but Levy shows signs in his cast/crew recruitment of retaining people who he identifies with most. This is something Beck does with his own team (principal orchestrator, conductor, etc.). Beck scored his first film Big fat liar, and is set to do the same for Pink Panther.
Since the wedding theme is in such demand, Bluntinstrument has
made a simple piano arrangement of clip1. Of itself it may not be perfect for
performance, but it should be a good start for anyone considering an arrangement
of their own.
Midi file
Page1, page
2
For anyone who likes the love theme (and from your e-mails, I see a few of you
do), though there is no soundtrack release of Beck's music, a version of this
theme sounding similar to that used during the wedding ceremony is used at the
very end of the end credits sequence (ca.1:29'37"), without the annoyances
of dialogue or sound effects.