Bad Girls

Jerry Goldsmith makes a not-so-triumphant return to the Western genre with Bad Girls, a surprisingly tepid and mawkish effort that fits awkwardly with the film's unintentionally campy sensibility. Jonathan Kaplan's tale of frontier prostitutes turned avenging angels was justly maligned upon its 1994 release, and while it's by no means Goldsmith's fault that his dramatic themes simply underline the film's absurdity, it's impossible to separate the music from the narrative. What is Goldsmith's fault, however, is that he does nothing to capitalize on the potential that this kind of distaff, leather-and-lace Western affords, instead turning in a pedestrian score that is merely functional regardless of the gender of the lead characters. ~ Jason Ankeny