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Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend: (Jerry Goldsmith)
When Walt Disney Pictures decided to venture into the realm of
non-G-rated films, it created the Touchstone Pictures studio in 1984 to
reap the benefits of such productions without tarnishing their own
reputation as the industry leader in the children's genre. Among its
early ventures was
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, a concept
that really had no chance of obtaining an audience given its inability
to determine what its target demographic exactly was. At its heart, the
story is a political statement against the hunting of rare species,
brutally depicting senseless killing and its impact on a family of
brontosaurs hidden deep in the contemporary African jungle. The
existence of the dinosaurs and the plight of a pair of young idealists
to bond with the remaining baby dinosaur and reunite it with its
captured mother is a topic suitable for a children's film, however. When
merging these two halves of
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, you
have a fundamentally flawed film. Without significant star power and
relying upon dinosaur effects that were decent but not anywhere near
those of the CGI revolution that arrived with
Jurassic Park less
than a decade later, the film was lacking in both production values and
a purpose, relegating it to obscurity. It is precisely because of this
odd combination of children's and adult elements in
Baby: Secret of
the Lost Legend that composer Jerry Goldsmith remembered the
assignment so fondly. His ability to bring both halves of the film
together into one cohesive score was an accomplishment of which he was
proud. When he insisted that the score become one of four of his works
represented on an industry tribute album to him in 1993, collectors took
a second look at it. The style of
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend
is saturated with all of the tendencies that Goldsmith followed
regularly at the time, from the blending of organic and electronic
elements to meter structures and thematic progressions that will all be
familiar to other Goldsmith works of the early to mid-1980's. His knack
for applying the electronics to unlikely fantasy situations was
especially intriguing in this era of Goldsmith's career, and this score,
perhaps even more than
Legend, epitomizes this oddly effective
technique. Many of the oddly wobbling synthetic effects that Goldsmith
was fond of at the time (among some of his other most strident effects)
are prevalent in this work. For collectors of the composer's works,
therefore,
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend is a predictable but
welcome entry.
There are three basic parts to
Baby: Secret of the
Lost Legend that intermingle for the entirety of the work. The first
is the ultra-cute, sensitive tone for the baby dinosaur, identified by
its own theme on light synthesizers and woodwinds. This idea is
extensively explored in "Dragon Breath," though in such long
performances, the theme's close relation to a secondary theme in
Under Fire will prove very distracting. The second part of
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend is a theme specific to the native
tribes of the region, complete with an assortment of appropriate
percussion that served as a precursor for
The Ghost and the
Darkness. Most impressive, however, is the final part of the score,
and it is in the bold title theme and its action variants that Goldsmith
previews his ballsy material for
First Blood Part II and
Total
Recall. Upon the introduction of the deep, resounding title theme in
"The Family" and continuing through the fanfare at the end of "Just a
Legend," this idea is the score's truly engaging personality
(despite owing much to
The Great Train Robbery). In "Dad,"
"The Jump," and "The Rescue," this theme (which also serves the
determination of the evil scientist hunting the animals) develops into
propulsive action structures that Goldsmith collectors will immediately
appreciate. The final minutes of "Dad" and "The Rescue" both qualify in
the highest ranks of Goldsmith's best "ass-kicking" material of brass
and percussion ruckus. When put together, these three overall ideas
don't create the greatest flow in terms of a standalone listening
experience, but the score works. The native material is marginalized
after early sequences, leaving the remainder in a sometimes awkward
balance between the hopelessly cute upper range tones for the baby
dinosaur and the explosive action cues mixed at regular intervals.
Ultimately, the three major action cues (all of significant length) are
the main attraction, impressing especially with their extremely meaty
lower brass emphasis. These highlights all existed on the 1993 tribute
album, but Disney finally worked with Intrada Records in 2007 to produce
a full, 53-minute release of
Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend. The
album was limited to 3,000 copies and eventually sold out. Improved
sound quality (which has very few archival-sounding moments and
therefore sounds as good as Goldsmith's purely digital recordings)
allows this release to finally make the 1993 album moot (all of its
contents are now available in fuller form). It's not a spectacular score
in its whole, and the fuzzy synthetic moments for the familial bonds do
become tiresome, but there is ten minutes of superior, raging Goldsmith
action music that will please any of his collectors.
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The insert includes extensive information about the score and film.
