The A.I. Soundtrack Is Background Noise for Bloated, Grandiose, Empty Action on the Screen

Stanley Kubrick was as thoughtful and fastidious about his soundtracks as he was about every other element of his films. Whether it was Walter/Wendy Carlos' scores for A Clockwork Orange and The Shining or the use of period standards like "We'll Meet Again" in Strangelove or "Paint It Black" and "Surfin' Bird" in Full Metal Jacket, he knew what he wanted, and what he wanted was, more often than not, perfect.

And I'll tell you?he never would've gone for this John Williams atrocity had he lived long enough to make A.I. himself.

There was a time when I was a great admirer of John Williams?Jaws, Star Wars, Close Encounters?even Indiana Jones?had rousing, memorable, appropriate soundtracks, which colored and commented upon the films they were attached to. To this day, you hear a few opening bars and you know exactly which theme you're listening to. Maybe he wasn't no Bernard Herrmann or Ennio Morricone or Nino Rota, but he was about as close as anything we had left, in these days when soundtracks have been reduced to Top 40 compilations.

Somewhere along the line there?I usually cite E.T.?something went wrong. Suddenly all his scores sounded the same. There were no more memorable themes?hell, there were barely any "themes" at all?no motifs to walk away whistling. Just these bloated, grandiose, absolutely empty soundscapes. Background noise for bloated, grandiose, empty action on the screen.

Williams' score for A.I. is no different. Whether his films took place in the distant past or the distant future, Kubrick knew instinctively how to make the music sound like it belonged in that specific period. Or he knew how to hire the proper composer to do that for him. Herrman and Morricone clearly knew the films they were scoring, and made adjustments in style and orchestration to accommodate that. Spielberg just gives Williams a call, and apparently tells him to write the same score again. Now Amistad sounds no different from Saving Private Ryan sounds no different from A.I.

In fact, if I didn't have the CD case in front of me while I was listening to the music, if I hadn't been told what soundtrack this was, I could've guessed it was John Williams in an instant?but probably would've assumed it was the score to Private Ryan.

A.I. takes place in a distant future, right? So why in the hell doesn't the music?except for one brief electronic interruption?reflect that at all? Instead, we get the same "grand," "exciting" brass flourishes for the chase scenes and the same "gentle," "sensitive" piano-and-strings weepers for the "touching" scenes.

Sad thing was, I was really hoping for something different this time around. Instead, I got more of the same?and worse. Worse, because here, along with pointless musical cues apparently lifted from Vertigo and South Pacific, we also get two versions of the same dreadful pop song ("For Always") sung by some currently popular female vocalist, which sounds suspiciously like that fucking Titanic song?or something from one of those new Disney cartoons, or the "love theme" from the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. It's both nauseating and irrelevant. And you get to hear it twice!

This whole package just really pisses me off?which, I suppose, is in itself kind of sad.