Pretty standard Americana score with careful arranging of some obvious track temp influences (Seabiscuit and Legends of the Fall to name a few). Still, an undemanding listen with nice orchestral flourishes, piano motifs, and country guitar playing. I much prefer Mark Isham's Racing Stripes to this (Racing Stripes has much more of a personality). It would be interesting to hear Kaczmarek's rejected score to what Debney finally wrote.
In an interview we did with a couple of friends with him when he visited Prague during The Karamazovs premiere a couple of years ago I asked him especially what happened on The Dreamer and in a nutschell, the score was completed and recorded in Prague. Everything seemed to be OK, but when mixing the movie, "somebody" (he didn't specify) wanted the music to be in slightly different style (more americanana sounding, I suppose). Since Kaczmarek was already working on another project, he couldn't get back to it to change anything and so the score went unused and Debney was hired. Kaczmarek also said that the main thing that interested him about the project was working for Dreamworks and as foreign composer taking such an american topic, but other than that the film wasn't his cup of tea and he didn't like it very much.
I bought this CD quite recently (very cheap off eBay) and it's your typical by-the-numbers/generic John Debney score. Very pleasant and listenable, with whiffs of 'other stuff' bleeding in every now and then. I had no idea it was a replacement score for a JPK one that probably had tons more originality and personality than the A.I type one Debney delivered (however enjoyable it may be).
