Just as the right choice of music can lift a film adaptation out of the ordinary (Pulp Fiction, Jaws, Trainspotting and The Exorcist are obvious examples), so can a bad choice of song bring a movie to a juddering halt like nothing else.
If it stays in your mind for all the wrong reasons, then something has gone badly awry. Here’s my pick of the worst.
‘Feeling Good’ and ‘American Girl’, The Handmaid’s Tale (2017)
This (largely excellent) TV series veers so wildly away from the book that it could almost be considered a new story rather than an adaptation of an existing one. Still, it works.
What’s not forgivable is the relatively upbeat ending, with the handmaids marching along the streets to the sound of ‘Feeling Good’, before Offred is carted off in a van to the bizarre backing of Tom Petty’s finest moment.
‘When I’m 64’, The World According to Garp (1982)
I’m guessing we’re going for the comedy in this blackest of tragi-comedies, then.
The Beatles’ song is used over the opening credits of the film adaptation of John Irving’s classic.
‘Imagine’, The Killing Fields (1984)
Strictly speaking this is from a story (in The New York Times Magazine) rather than a book, but it’s so jarring it just has to be included.
The reunion of Sydney Schanberg and Dith Pran would be perfectly judged if it wasn’t for John Lennon ‘You-hoo-ooh-ooh’-ing all over the background.
‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’, Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Great song. Great film. But when Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) visits a strip club and is pawed over to the sounds of Essex boy Ian Dury singing ‘Hit me, hit me, hit me!’ it’s all a bit too obvious.
‘California Girls’, View To a Kill (1985)
It’s hard to know what would have annoyed Ian Fleming more: The title of his story being used as nothing more than peg to hang the 14th (and second worst) James Bond film on, Roger Moore going through the motions in his final outing as 007, or the ludicrous use of this Beach Boys song during a ski chase.
‘Fidelity Fiduciary Bank’, Mary Poppins (1964)
Which one to choose? This film has three decent songs, and too many duff ones to mention, but this is probably the worst of the lot.
All By My Shelf 