Music plays a huge part in director Wes Anderson's meticulously crafted world. For this movie set in India, he's come up with a typically wide-ranging, mind-boggling soundtrack largely culled from the mid-'60s and early '70s, despite the fact that the film is set in the present. Though Indian cinema has come to mean Bollywood for most Americans, Anderson pays tribute to art filmmaker Satyajit Ray by including music from some of his movies, mines the early (1963-1970), lesser-known oeuvre of James Ivory, and features traditional Indian tunes. This may throw fans of Bollywood's more frantic style at first (even if the upbeat go-go "Typewriter Tip, Tip, Tip," co-sung by superstar Asha Bhosle, gets close), but the music's eerie charm works in insidious ways. British Invasion pop, an enduring love of Anderson's, is represented by obscure songs from well-known combos (three cuts from the Kinks' 1970 album Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One), as well as obscure songs from obscure performers, like Peter Sarstedt's 1969 nugget "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)." Add a fantastic Rolling Stones pop tune from 1965, a couple of Western classical tracks, a popular French hit by Joe Dassin, and you have a CD that's all over the map yet oddly consistent in its eccentricity. --Elisabeth Vincentelli

Please don't balk at the ringing cliché-o-meters when I call this soundtrack "evocative" since Wes Anderson's soundtracks are always appropriate to the settings and themes on display. Beautiful and emotional, the eclectic mix seems to intentionally involve music of a bygone era in settings that suggest no time has passed, when indeed much has. This sense is very real in India, and the tale of three neurotic, self-involved materialists gaining a vague sense of this along with a need to take corrective action through self-awareness makes this soundtrack appropriate to both story and setting.

For this reason, I think we can forgive the fact that this is less an original soundtrack than an original collection for a theme. Also for this reason, you may wish to see the film first to see if you gain any meaningful associations with individual tracks before committing to a download. I submit that you likely WILL find at least some connections (yes, a movie plug.)

It is, unsurprisingly, heavily weighted towards Indian music, particularly the poppy, Bollywood variety. This can drag on one's desire to replay the soundtrack in its entirety since not all of these tracks are easily connected in one's memory to a scene in the film. Notable exceptions are "Title...from...Jalshagar" as the soundtrack to Bill Murray's quirky "chase" cameo in the opening scene, and "Praise Him" which evokes mix of familiarity and now-foreign disconnects the characters experience upon finding their mother in a remote Indian orphanage.

Great movie and soundtrack. You should be aware that if you download the single "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) by Peter Sarstedt, from Itunes, for example, you will NOT get the same song as featured in the film. You must buy the soundtrack to get the film's version of the song, which features accordian music, a faster tempo, and a better vocal by Sarstedt. I recommend the soundtrack version.

Wonderful. It is not only a very persuasive soundtrack (of an excellent movie) but a review of some of the best Hindu Movies Music ever made.

You will become addicted to this soundtrack. It actually surpasses the movie in that respect (although the movie is great too). I'm ready to start searching the cable channels or Netflix looking for these old Satyajit Ray movies.

Loved the movie, the soundtrack is not that great. The quirkiness of the movie does not translate well to the CD. The indian music selections on the disc leave much to be desired.