Various artists

Music from the Motion Picture The Ladies Man

DreamWorks Records

“Saturday Night Live” producer Lorne Michaels doesn’t seem to understand the problem of turning a five-minute skit into a full-length film. He must think it’s a good idea, but in his many attempts, it has only been accomplished twice successfully.

So he’s trying again with Leon Phelps - the man who is not so smooth but thinks he is. He’s also given Phelps the music to ply his trade of seduction.

The album begins with a very short skit from Tim Meadows (Phelps) that defies logic as to why it is there. The only plausible explanation is there was some sort of edict as to how long the record had to be, so a random clip from the film was added.

Hopefully Meadows’ lines are funnier in the movie.

The rest of the album is a weird combination of soul classics from the likes of the Isley Brothers, Al Green, Bobby Womack and Teddy Pendergrass, and musical interludes from score composer Marcus Miller.

Miller’s interludes are either meant as tributes to these steamy 1970s make-out anthems, satires of them or simply copies of the style.

Why they were included on the soundtrack is unclear, because the interludes are just tracks to skip - they don’t add anything new to the style or even execute it particularly well.

Meadows, ‘The Ladies Man’ himself, makes surprisingly few appearances - “Leon’s Poem” and the aforementioned introductory track are the only ones. There can only be two explanations as to why the producers failed to include choice lines from the film: Either they are morons, or the movie is completely unfunny.

Whatever the reason, the soundtrack would have benefited from at least a couple of Meadow’s hilariously unsmooth attempts at smoothness.

The film’s music is more suave than the movie or skit could ever be. Pendergrass’ overheated “Turn Off the Lights” is probably being held up as some kind of joke, but it’s about something deeper than the innumerable one-night stands people like Phelps use as a soundtrack.

Indeed, modern R & B sounds like it should be in one of Meadow’s skits compared with this material. Modern acts should look at the songs on this album and try to emulate what it did well instead of plundering it for samples.

Artists like Al Green would sound deep and soulful ordering a plate of fries, and his classic “Let’s Stay Together” makes it on the album.

The soundtrack also includes some songs those of the 1990s generation probably haven’t heard, including Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway’s “The Closer I Get to You” and Womack’s “Lookin’ For a Love.”

They all hearken back to a time when R&B was apparently alive and experimenting. Womack’s song is a cross-pollination that uses the singer’s soulful voice on what is basically a rock ’n’ roll track.

The soundtrack delivers the direct opposite of the film - songs that are so real and great that they defy the attempts at satire placed on them here.