For writer/co-producer John Hughes, Alan Silvestri’s score for Dutch is an eclectic mix of styles, matching the film’s need for source cues yet leaving room for other source tracks and songs inherent to Hughes’ sonic comedic film world.

The dramatic cues are fairly brief, with a few topping about 3 minutes, yet they’re clearly written to balance broad comedy with small moments of character subtleties. “Knockout Punch,” for example, is centered around solo piano, and the apprehensive flow of notes with slight string support eventually converge with a full orchestra. A later cue, “For the Record,” is a deeper theme summation, as piano and strings play off each other to show differing moods, setting up a reunion of sorts as high strings close the cue with a warm feelings before a brief piano recap.

One also hears some of Silvestri’s patented action writing in “I Could Sue You For This,” a cue that evokes the doom tenor of Shattered, written that same year, and containing the same blend of hesitant strings, soft rippling percussion, and step-like high notes punctuated by piano and xylophone hits.

Classical snottiness is an important component of the film’s setting, and the two chamber pieces – an excerpt from Bach’s “Brandenburg Concerto” and Silvestri’s own “Elegant Dining” – create humour through performance nuances.

The use of jazz – dominant in the CD’s opening cue “Main Title,” and the lengthy jazz lounge source “Party” – is also present in “Be Pathetic,” where Silvestri pits jazz against orchestral bathos to create a short but humorous moment. Since the score drifts through several styles, Silvestri uses the piano as a linking device, making the shifts between broad comedy, drama, and Hughes’ inevitable saccharine happy ending less jarring. The Christmas-tinged “The Shelter” has a choir, and Silvetsri’s main theme flows onwards into to the score’s concluding cue, “Home / Foyer / I’m Staying” with full orchestra.

La-La Land’s beautifully mastered CD includes several unused and alternate cues (the brief “Foyer (alt)” has a striking Americana flavour), and while not a highpoint in the composer’s canon, it’s less fractured than expected, and fits in with Silvestri’s other light comedic fodder, including Father of the Bride (1991), Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992), Grumpy Old Men (1993) and Ritchie Rich (1994).

© 2010 Mark R. Hasan