Something's Gotta Give Something's Gotta Give / O.s.t. Artist

The romantic comedies of writer/directors {|Nancy Meyers|} and {|Nora Ephron|} always seek to find contemporary equivalents for traditional sentiments, and as a result they tend to use popular music of a certain vintage on their {|soundtracks|}. {|Lo... Read more

The romantic comedies of writer/directors {|Nancy Meyers|} and {|Nora Ephron|} always seek to find contemporary equivalents for traditional sentiments, and as a result they tend to use popular music of a certain vintage on their {|soundtracks|}. {|Louis Armstrong|}, crooning some love lyric in his gravelly voice, is always a favorite, that is, when a similar reading by, say, {|Jimmy Durante|} isn't used. {|Meyers|}, who filled her last movie, {|What Women Want|}, with {|Frank Sinatra|} {|ballads|}, gives a French twist to {|Something's Gotta Give|}, and not surprisingly she starts out with {|Armstrong|} rasping his way through the {|Edith Piaf|} signature song {|La Vie en Rose.|} Then, it's on to the gravelly voiced {|Steve Tyrell|} singing a {|Gershwin|} {|standard|} and {|the Flamingos|}' dreamy '50s revival of {|I Only Have Eyes for You,|} before listeners settle into a series of {|sambas|} sung in French and numbers by the likes of {|Charles Trenet|} and {|Eartha Kitt|}. So far, so dull. The album ends unfortunately with a reprise of {|La Vie en Rose|} sung by the film's star, {|Jack Nicholson|}, who wisely has been prevented from singing in the movies since he had a number cut from {|On a Clear Day You Can See Forever|} in 1970 and was an embarrassment in the 1975 film version of {|Tommy|}. No doubt his rendition is supposed to be funny (in the sense of a light chuckle on the way out of the theater), but it serves as a misguided tag to a {|soundtrack|} that wasn't very interesting to begin with. ~ William Ruhlmann Less