Silva’s CD is another beautifully engineered presentation of Rolfe Kent’s fairly brief 17 Again score, and kicks off with the film’s two primary themes: a brassy big city harmony augmented by a ticking time motif (“Game Theme”), and a youthful kinetic rhythm that propels a short melody carried by piano and oboe for “Scarlett Theme. (There’s also a brief quote of “Blue Moon” that’s cleverly worked into the cue's intro bars.)

Most much of the score shifts between various moods of contemplation (appropriate for a character given the chance to change events of his life at age seventeen), and Kent tends to save the orchestra’s might for the film’s more pivotal emotional hits (“Mike Realizes,” and “Race to the Courthouse”) and sticks with small instrumental combos for the more emotionally intimate moments such as the short but beautiful meditation “Mike is Wistful.”

The Game Theme is also given a funny variation in “Mark Starts School,” with big hunks of brass heard in the title track now presenting the theme as something awkward, uneasy, and nervy. Kent uses a wonky rhythm before quoting the main theme, and infers a young lion entering a jungle environment with thick percussion, mocking brass, and delicate wooden taps.

South Asian percussion, slide guitar, oboe, and clean brass lines give “It’s Not About Basketball” a delightful groove, and again demonstrate Kent’s knack for taking disparate cultural instruments and creating a bubbly little cue. Kent’s use of lilting strings also hark back to Randy Newman’s The Paper (1994), one of the best Big City scores filled with orchestral hustle and bustle, whereas in "Sex Ed," Kent indulges in thick Barryesque strings.

The whole score is wrapped up with the lengthy cuts “I Lost My Way” and “Suddenly She Knows,” both of which expand on the otherwise brief theme statements, and provide some dramatic closure to a score that obviously had to compete with a fair share of source songs.

This CD was released in tandem with Kent's other 2009 score, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

© 2009 Mark R. Hasan