Lake Placid

With John Ottman being one of the most talented and interesting young composers working in Hollywood today, I have to say that I was a little disappointed in this score. It's biggest drawback is the lack of a strong theme, binding the score together. Ottman really has the talent for creating strong, complex themes for the characters in the films he is scoring, his score for Goodbye Lover being an excellent example. But Lake Placid is mostly dramatic underscore. Atmospheric, ambient music, that unfortunately does not make a great listening experience away from the film.

Still, music does not have to be thematic to be good. But what Lake Placid also is missing is fresh ideas and originality. The score seems to be a rather efortless - or should I say uninspired - production by Ottman. It's only in a couple of the cues the music really to grabs you and gets interesting. "Reluctant Passangers" for example has a good, exciting, brass driven staccato theme. But it's short, which is a pity. There's also some great action music in "Udder Preparations", and the "Main Title" is quite attractive, with its typical Ottman sound. All in all this score includes a couple of minutes of really good music, but the rest is bland suspense music. We all know that Ottman is able to compose wonderful music - in a few years, the composer will hopefully be one of the top composers. Let's hope that Ottman will find the inspiration again, for his future scores. And let us hope that he will get better films to score. A film about a gigantic, man-eating crocodile is probably not a film Ottman, or any other composer for that matter, was born to score. And maybe that is the reason this isn't one of John Ottman's stronger, or more memorable, score.