Four scores come easily to mind for me; two are quite underappreciated and one is still totally obscure.
1) Billy Goldenberg's PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM (1972) is fairly brief and is close to being a single-theme score, and yet that appealing melody enhances both the comic and gradually emerging romantic elements of the story. (The theme also recurs in an amusing range of modes within main character Woody Allen's multiple fantasy sequences.) Although this got an LP release, it was essentially a dialogue album -- with laugh track! -- that largely buried the score underneath.
2) Comments I've read on Jerry Goldsmith's I.Q. (1994) are generally dismissive, but I've always found it charming -- even the derided interpolations of "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" within an entertaining story that includes a benevolent Albert Einstein among its characters. Goldsmith's insertions of "doo-wop" material are appropriate for reinforcing the 1950s period, as well as for balancing the blue-collar Tim Robbins character against the academic milieu; and the delicate "First Sight" cue is, for me, one of the most persuasive depictions ever of genre-conventional mutual chemistry. (I might be a rare Goldsmith fan who was delighted to see this finally get released.)
3) Michael Small's LOVE AND PAIN and the whole damn thing (1972) is still obscure, but I've loved it now for more than 40 years. Composed predominantly for acoustic guitar, recorder, and strings, this score largely ignores the (effective) comedy but brilliantly reflects the tender romance that develops between an odd couple who meet on a bus tour of Spain. (I haven't abandoned hope that someday we'll get a CD from the local, leading Small-centric label.)
4) Last on this short list is Georges Delerue's A LITTLE ROMANCE (1979), much maligned by fans for decades over its receiving the Oscar instead of Goldsmith's STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE. While I have to admit that, as a fervent young Goldsmith fan myself at the time, I stormed out of a friend's home in fury at that point in the awards telecast, I also had loved the LITTLE ROMANCE score before that year's Oscars show -- and again later, after enough time had passed.
At the time, I compared the quality and scale of that sci-fi masterwork to Delerue's comparatively light and breezy creation and felt Goldsmith had been robbed. Then there was the issue of the piece heard (I think) most often within ROMANCE being from Vivaldi -- which I hadn't known when I saw that film and never suspected, because one of my favorite Delerue styles (as heard in THE DAY OF THE DOLPHIN and DAY FOR NIGHT) sounds like Vivaldi, anyway; so for a while I felt ROMANCE represented a cheat. But when I watched the movie again years later, I responded all over again to the inarguable appeal and joy of Delerue's original material; especially the (to me) irresistible delight of its flute-driven Main Title and the effective innocence conveyed by his recurring love theme for guitar.
So awards aren't everything. (Especially Oscars.) The music that pleases us during our lifetimes counts for more.
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