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BUY THE CD
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If you’ve watched any television within the past few years, chances are you’ve heard from composer Wendy Wang in some form or another, whether it be via commercial (Coca-Cola, Apartments.com), movie trailer (Focus, The Heat), or television show (Parenthood, Jersey Shore). Recently, she continued expanding her seemingly ever-widening repertoire into full-length feature films with 2015’s coming-of-age teen comedy Man Up, which chronicles the journey of an irresponsible teen after he gets his girlfriend pregnant and moves in with his pothead best friend.
Thanks to straightforward song titles like “College Party Entrance,” “Martin Freakout,” and “Waiting Room” and an eclectic mix of songs spanning many sounds and
genres, it’s easy (and quite fun) to create your own scene for each track and loosely fill the gaps in between—essentially creating your own personal, albeit general,
narrative. However, it’s also easy to create unfair expectations of the film itself by comparing it to what you envision (ahhh...creative differences in Hollywood).
For that reason, it may be easier either to watch the film before listening to the soundtrack or not to watch it at all if (like me) you listened to the soundtrack first. If you choose to watch the film after listening to the soundtrack, you’ll have to be very careful in tempering your expectations.
Now that that’s out of the way, this soundtrack is so much fun. Wang, who is a talented guitarist, bassist, and pianist, seems to be flexing her keyboard/synthesizer
muscles more here. And that makes sense, considering how many different sounds and genres she’s incorporating—whether it’s the robotic thumping of a rap beat like “What’s That Thing,” the throwback Tarantino-esque horns and quick guitar strums of “Angry Mom,” the smooth keyboard, steady percussion, and silky vocals (Allison Louie) of a 1980s ballad in “I Can See The Change,” the soft country twang and vocals (Shaun Rust) of “Summer Knees,” the heavy electric rock guitar riffs of “Metal Bike,” the more abstract bass and whistles of “Best Friend Talk” and “Scary Intro,” or the catchy melodies of songs like “Short Chase” and “The Challenge” (vocals by Evan Slamka) that will have many feeling nostalgic for inspirational ‘80s movie montages and NES video games. And it all comes together to create a quirky, lighthearted tone that’s almost guaranteed to leave you smiling (and hopefully it will have the same effect in the film).
The only problem is that many of the songs (out of 21) are only ten to thirty seconds long, resulting in a paltry nineteen minutes of music—a pretty glaring fact that
makes it hard to recommend buying it at full price. I’ve heard the saying, “leave your audience begging for more,” but this left me salivating. However, if you can find it for eight bucks or
less, you’re not going to get a much better value than this—and even if it is more than eight dollars, you can always man up and buy it anyway.
Ed. Note: The Man Up soundtrack is available for downloading through iTunes or Amazon. Man Up is currently available for screening through Vimeo and will be available on Netflix starting the end of June.
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