Amazon.co.uk Review
Edelman put the musical chops into
Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, so he clearly enjoyed poking fun both at the kung-fu genre and his own earlier style. Spoof is very much the intent of
Shanghai Noon and its score. It is, after all, a Jackie Chan flick in which his character Chon Wang (!) travels to the Wild West to rescue a kidnapped Chinese princess. The collision of musical forms bubbles along for a few cues, but then suddenly pipes up with the Elmer Bernstein approach to Western heroic fanfares mingled with harmonica in "From East To West". Chan's hero theme established, the rest of the hour long album is a constant expectation foiler, jumping between good ol' Western adventure, rhythm and rock cool ("Becoming a Cowboy in Carson City"), and delicate ensemble playing from a collection of oriental instrumentation (pipa, ruan, gin, erhu, dizi, and xiano). The composer's preference for doubling or overdubbing live playing with synths fortunately doesn't spoil the comedy. --
Paul Tonks
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