Review by the Groovy Yak

Wisdom is the least enjoyable Danny Elfman musical endeavor that I've ever heard- completely bizarre, completely electronic, and completely 80's. Wisdom is a modern-day Robin Hood/Bonnie and Clyde movie. Estevez and Demi Moore star.

I have to hand it to Danny, though. This score is quite inventive. Elfman uses an orchestra of samples to score Emilo Estevez's quite dull directorial debut. I'm not sure whose idea it was to have a completely electronic score, though I have an idea it was the studio. Danny Elfman was relatively new to the world of filmscoring and this was also Emilio's first time in a director's chair, so I'm sure execs. were worried. By using all-electronics, the studio doesn't have to pay an orchestra.

So, what basically Wisdom is composed of is 100's of samples, layered on top of each other. There's the bass ostinato- percussion or some sort of non-tonal sound, then there's interplay between lots of exotic and less-than-enjoyable synth sounds. It's that way for almost every track! There's lots of strange voices, high metallic noises, and lots of my favorite electronic instrument- cheesy electronic piano. (That's sarcasm!) This score is just too outdated for the late 90's.

The complex rhythms and strange sounds are enjoyable for about 10 seconds, but I have to say that I respect Elfman's inventiveness and his experimenting with polyrhythms. It's a score that's interesting, but definitely not something that you'd play over and over again. It's just not a good representation of Elfman's talent. I have a dubbed copy of this score, and that is definitely all I need.

Rating: *

SFT's review is being updated.

Rating (as heard on CD): ** 1/2