Can you believe that 1998 was ten years ago? A decade. Yet Ben Stiller still looks exactly the same as he
did when he appeared in Zero Effect, an offbeat, Portland-based crime story featuring a modern day Sherlock Holmes/Inspector Watson pairing (Bill Pullman and Stiller respectively), written and directed by Jake Kasdan. Kasdan is better and more recently known for Orange County (2002), which he directed, and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007), which he both directed and co-wrote with Judd Apatow...script and songs alike, for better or worse.
Fortunately for us, other people wrote the music in Zero Effect. It has a great VA soundtrack thanks to two top notch music supervisors—Happy Walters (The Big Lebowski) and Manish Raval (Donnie Darko). The soundtrack, in fact, is somewhat of a find, featuring lots of forgotten little near-gems from the late 1990's—an era music journalist Vincent Jeffries once described as "the high point of alternative pointlessness."
The fun side of such pointlessness permeates the soundtrack, yet music doesn't have much of a presence in the film itself and as so many directors do, Kasdan plays it safe by giving the two most prominent film-music moments to long since established artists like Nick Cave and Elvis Costello. We're not at all sure where the fabulous "Some Jingle Jangle Morning" by Mary Lou Lord got used in this film, but we're grateful for being reminded of her in any case.
Zero Effect isn't one for the ages necessarily, but it's a fun ride.
Soundtrack Listing:
"Mystery Dance" by Elvis Costello
"One Dance" by Dan Bern
"Starbucked" by Bond
"Into My Arms" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
"Some Jingle Jangle Morning" by Mary Lou Lord (Editor's Pick)
"Emma J" by Brendon Benson
"Drifting Along" by Jamiroquai
"Til You Die" by Candy Butchers
"Lounge" by Esthero
"Three Days" by Thermodore
"Rest My Head Against the Wall" by Heatmiser (Editor's Pick)
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