A certain song or piece of music was in a certain movie, but in your opinion the combination didn’t work. It could be part of a film score by a composer who was hired for the purpose, or it could be other music that a filmmaker decided to use.
The song that the school choir sings in one of the Harry Potter movies is jarringly out of place. It sounds as if it was written by a Muggle who had no knowledge of wizards at all, was trying to imagine them (anachronistically for a kids’ movie) by reading the opening scenes of Macbeth, and ended up with an overromanticized and yet somehow pointless bit of treacly fluff.
(BTW, “treacly fluff” is mine, you can’t have it.) 
David Bowie’s Cat People theme song ruined Inglorious Basterds for me. Completely wrong wrong wrong. Turned it off, sold the DVD. Done. Come to think of it, I haven’t watched any Tarantino that came after, either. Done.
The Naked Kiss (1964) - Constance Towers is an ex-prostitute who finds a new life in a small town working with handicapped children. The small town holds secrets of an extremely disturbing nature. At one point, Constance and the children sing “Little Child,” a number that goes on (and on) and well beyond “treacly.” The scene is hard to watch and its length difficult to justify. The scene and the whole film are on YT.
The Deadly Affair (1967) - Dull and largely static spyjinx put to Quincy Jones’ happenin’ music.
The Inside Man (2006) - A reasonably entertaining - if credibility defying - heist flick with incongruous Bollywood opening and closing theme music.
Watchmen (2009) - All its other flaws aside, this had some of the worst music supervision of any film I can ever recall seeing. “The Sound of Silence” played at a funeral? How heavy-handed can you get? “Ride of the Valkyries” during the Vietnam sequence? Wonder where they got the idea for that?
Sounds like a good mix to me. I’ll check it out.
I have never understood “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” in the bicycle sequence of Butch Cassidy. To me, it’s jarringly out of place.
Actually, I loved the music choices for Watchmen. Subtle as a sledgehammer, it has to be asmitted*, but they were completely appropriate, if obvious. I especially liked the use of “Prophecies”/“Pruit Igoe” (better known as "That Music from Koyaanisqatsi") for the Dr. Manhattan bio section.
as mentioned on this Board, the very music for the trailer of Watchmen is intriguingly appropriate – it’s a companion piece/remix of the Smashing Pumpkins song used at the end of the atrocious Batman and Robin, pretty clearly chosen , probably as a dig at that film
*At the line “I turn my collar to the cold and damp”, Walter Kovacs/Rorschach actually does[ turn his collar to the cold and damp. It’s so literal it’s almost painful.
I’m apparently a sucker for movie music that other people think horribly inappropriate. Here are two other examples:
Ladyhawke – People loved Richard Donner’s 1985 fantasy, except for the trendy, modern Andrew Powell -with-Alan Parsons progressive rock music, which a lot of people hated.
Metropolis – Giorgiou Moroder’s somewhat restored version* of Fritz Lang’s film blew me away – simply using negatives that hadn’t been copied a zillion times, giving the film wonderful definition was astonishing. He also added long-lost bits of the film culled from archives, and added tinting.** But people hated the modern rock score by the likes of Freddie Mercury and Adam Ant so much that they staged showings of the film with the score turned off, and live music of a completely different kind provided. Me, I love the film music, and it annoys me that the sound track album doesn’t actually use the song versions featured in the film.
*Not really a restoration, because, despite adding a lot of scenes, he cut out others in order to keep the running time to 89 minutes. The later film restorations were superior in keeping all the film, and in going to greater efforts to clean them up.
** Even here there’s controversy. There’s nothing wrong with tinting the film – this kind of thing was routinely done in the silent era, but Moroder went further and selectively colored different parts of some frames, as in the scenes converting the robot to look like Maria.
A Clockwork Orange has great classical music and stuff by Wendy Carlos.
It also has this.
Let me tell you, back in the old vinyl days when you’re playing the soundtrack album as background music, it’s just jarring. Now you just erase it from the playlist.
Silence of The Lambs. The use of Tom Petty’s “American Girl” to introduce the killer’s victim was blatantly blunt to the point of taking me completely out of the movie. In a film with such wonderful subtlety, this sticks out in a comically bad way. I’m surprised “Psycho Killer” didn’t come up next on the station’s playlist.
Loved the movie, loved the soundtrack (I’m a huge Alan Parsons fan)…but not together. IMO they didn’t fit at all.
Suicide Squad has the most obvious possible musical choice at every turn. If you close your eyes, you can practically see the boardroom meeting where the choices were made.
In the movie itself IIRC that piece was in the background or on the radio or something - not out of place. I used to listen to the album obsessively (on vinyl) and I always liked the little bit of lightness after the intense musical drama, kind of like Her Majesty at the end of the Abbey Road B-side.
I’m probably in the minority (hah) on this, but the score for Minority Report didn’t work for me at all. I’m usually a fan of John Williams scores in movies, but the futuristic feel and blue color palette of the movie would have fit better with something more modern.
Scenes like this were cheapened by the cheesy music.
Well, I didn’t mean that they hated the music itself. This thread is about music fails – inappropriate music for the movie. I doubt if most of the music cited here is disapproved of in its own right; it’s just not seen as correctly paired with the movie.
While I wasn’t that much of a fan of Tim Burton’s Batman (too theatrical) it was even more painful to see them shoehorn those Prince songs into the film. It must have been a case of after paying Prince a boatload of money to make a soundtrack feeling obligated to put them in somewhere.
Some praised Holly Hunter’s spontaneous compositions for The Piano, but I thought they were like a poor man’s George Winston — already a low bar.
Not quite a movie but I have a DVD set of ads etc. from the '50s, and one etc. is an industrial about a town in Pennsylvania not far from where I used to live.
One section had rousing martial music - behind a segment of this clerk going through his mail at a desk and taking notes.
Hilarious.
It was the 80s
As for Butch Cassidy mentioned above…it was 1969 (I think). Also led to a similar song in the fantastic Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.
As for the OP. Jaws soundtrack…the merry romp music when chasing the shark. It works for me, but barely. It really only pays off in the final shot of Quint looking at Hooper.
It is a good mix.
Ditto. And I love that movie.
Isn’t “jarring” the point of the whole show? (Or at least one of the points?)