The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

I'm not sure whether it's a bum deal being Cliff Eidelman in 2005. After an explosive Trek sized boost to his career in the 1990's and some fairly high profile features following, he now seems to be the composer of choice on chick flicks. Maybe he's happy to write pleasant, frothy and undemanding scores for these films and keep his broader dramatic skills for the concert hall, but I'm sure he'd relish the chance to score something just a bit more demanding once in a while. Fortunately, his music for Sisterhood of the Travelling Trousers (as it would be in the UK. If it were pants, the film would be some way above a PG rating I would guess) is very enjoyable and manages to stave off becoming bland, twinkling piano muzak.
The opening Prologue is an especially lovely opening of strings and piano - true, not an especially imaginative combination, but offering a nice tune with a pleasing hint of melancholy which sets it apart from the kind of blandness that can afflict music for this kind of flick. Fate introduces an equally charming wordless female vocal which is somewhere between James Horner and Thomas Newman, but again, is fairly downbeat in tone and, dare I say it, almost haunting. In between, there is plenty of the requisite perkiness from piano, harp and some fun marimba riffs, notably in Rules of the Pants. Unsurprisingly, Eidelman can't entirely avoid some twinkling piano, but one gets the sense that, in between the requisite songs (on a separate album), Eidelman was gifted with some of the more 'dramatic' moments.

The album closes with the lovely Travelling Song performed by Lila Haydn on both violin and vocals (although it's not clear if she's the vocalist throughout the album) and a nicely arranged Piano Suite of the score's main ideas, performed by the composer. Although the thematic material is fairly strong (for the genre), when condensed down to just piano, it makes one realise the value of Eidelman's light and occasionally imaginative orchestration, although it makes for a delightful way to close the album. Hardly likely to go down as one of 2005's great scores, but sitting comfortably alongside Alexandre Desplat's Upside of Anger as a superior example of feather light film composition.