Serial Mom

I wonder if this would have been the result had John Waters made American Beauty, a satire on modern American suburban bliss and the potentially psychotic underbelly it can inspire. Basil Poledouris' response is a score that certainly starts with a very sweet natured in the bouncy Main Title, a jaunty amalgam of Jerry Goldsmith's suburban music for Joe Dante and just about any comedy score tune ever penned by Alan Silvestri, James Newton Howard, Marc Shaiman or James Horner. Morning Suite continues the mood for a while, but soon starts raining on the idyllic parade with some hilariously gratuitous dialogue clips. I'm not usually one to support the use of dialogue on soundtracks, but Waters' dialogue is so amusingly foul mouthed (I'm surprised there was no 'explicit lyrics/dialogue' sticker on the front of my copy) that I couldn't help but chuckle. If you laugh long and hard at South Park, you'll love it, but rest assured that it doesn't obscure Poledouris' music to any great detriment.

Although the music tries to remain upbeat, the more sinister tones creep in more and more often, mixing effortlessly throughout It's Been a Crazy Day and Flea Market Suite. The Sterner Payback is something of a Goldsmithian action cue, with a generally serious tone, but the occasional comedic spark from time to time and Buckle Up, Scotty!!! continues the trend. The final two tracks are a the dark and lighter sides to the finale, with the serious Courtroom Suite (aside from a peculiar moment of bongo drumming) and the quasi uplifting I'm Coming Home. Poledouris doesn't quite revert to the upbeat opening material, the innocuous innocence wouldn't really be appropriate. This is the kind of music that Poledouris might have come up with had he been engaged to score a Joe Dante movie and, like the Goldsmith scores for Dante, Serial Mom is an enjoyable and tuneful piece of fluff. The dialogue clips may amuse, offend or irritate, but they don't really disrupt the music and are infrequent enough to be forgiven.