"Hoosiers"

To get myself in the mood for March Madness, I spent my Thursday evening watching Hoosiers. I'd never seen the movie before, so now I can cross it off my list of "I can't believe you've never seen [x]" movies that often come up in conversation with my friends. I really enjoyed it, but there's not much I can say to praise the movie that the Sports Guy hasn't already said. I didn't have as dramatic a reaction to the movie as he did: it didn't make me want to run out and play hoops for two hours, though I did briefly think back on my short career playing basketball in gym class and for my Jewish youth group when I was in high school. I couldn't shoot or dribble, though my passing wasn't too bad if I had enough time to think about it. Anyway, this isn't about me. The only aspect of the movie that bothered me was the score. Jerry Goldsmith composed the music, and in some places it was exceptional and suited the scenes perfectly. Unfortunately, for most of the film the music was the synthesized crap that filled out countless soundtracks of '80s movies. Hoosiers is set in 1951 in Indiana, but the music sounds like it's New York, 1985. How hard would it have been for Goldsmith to come up with something a little more appropriate to the '50s? Maybe it was a budgetary thing: they couldn't afford an orchestra to play the entire score, so they went to the drums and synth for the rest of the movie. I was surprised to learn that Goldsmith received an Oscar nomination for best musical score for this movie. I guess that the music went over better in 1986. It really was distracting to Liz and I. More than once, I sang along with the music, making up cheesy lyrics like "Hickory's gonna win it/look, there goes Jimmy/the cheerleaders are dancing/oh no, Shooter's off the wagon." Aside from the music, it was a great film, and even knowing the outcome, I got a little misty-eyed at the end. To be fair, it IS dusty in the apartment. We haven't cleaned up in a few days.