Search - Alan Silvestri, Ed Shearmur, Giorgio Moroder :: Chick Flix

Who would have thought "Pulp Fiction" was a Chick Flick...

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 08/10/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"While sitting through the previews of coming attractions at the movie theater I often incure my wife's wrath by commenting that a particular film is a "chick flick." In my defense, inadequate as it may well be, I would point out that I use the term ironically in regards to films like "The Bourne Supremacy." I mention this only because it seems clear to me that whoever put together the 20 tracks in the "Chick Flix" collections has a similar sense of humor because as you listen to these songs and identify the film from which they come you will notice that the only one to get two bites of the apple, once you consider the "Grease Mega Mix" to be a medley but only one track, is "Pulp Fiction." The two songs are choice tracks, "Song of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield" and the cover of Neil Diamond's "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" by Urge Overkill, but you would be hard pressed to find a movie that less fits within the parameters of the album title than Quentin Tarantino's gory little postmodern film.



In addition to that little in-joke you will find some choice examples that are more to your expectations, including the song from what "Entertainment Weekly" picked as the most romantic moment in movie history, namely Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" from "Say Anything." The best songs are those that immediately conjur up the movie moments, such as Mickey & Sylvia's "Love Is Strange" from "Dirty Dancing," although sometimes that is a new association, as with Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman," which remains a great song without the movie. Then there are songs that pop up at both the start and the climax of films, such as "Flashdance (What a Feeling)" by Irene Cara from "Flashdance" and "Don't You Forget About Me" by Simple Minds from "The Breakfast Club."



There are good songs for which you might not be able to come up with the movie, such as "Last Dance" by Donna Summers ("Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle") and Lisa Loeb's "Stay (I Misssed You)" ("Reality Bites"). Then there are movies that you really like and songs from them that would not necessarily spring to mind, as is the case for me with "Notting Hill" (Ronan Keating's "When You Say Nothing At All") and "Sleepless in Seattle" (Louie Armstrong's "A Kiss to Build a Dream On"). The question ends up being how many of these songs you do not already have that are worth adding to your music library. Otherwise what you have here is a rather diverse walk down memory lane, especially if you have not seen all twenty of these films (I was rather surprised to see that I had)."