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A Christmas Carol: (Alan Silvestri) If you roll
your eyes at every new adaptation of this famous Charles Dickens tale on
the big or small screen, you're not alone. It's been retold and
mutilated so many times now that its original emotional appeal has been
perhaps eternally diminished, depending usually on how powerful the
performance of the grumpy Ebenezer Scrooge. Walt Disney Pictures and
screenwriter/director Robert Zemeckis plunged the concept into the
computerized realm of 3D animation for the 2009 holiday season, and
while the technical merits of the production are distinct improvements
over the techniques of animated photography that Zemeckis attempted in
The Polar Express and
Beowulf, Jim Carrey's performances
in both the lead role and as the majority of speaking ghosts in
A
Christmas Carol have been noted for their shallow heart and
secondary emphasis to the visual techniques. The script also poses some
awkward challenges, including action and silly comedy that contradict
each other in betraying the spirit of Disney's rather lucky PG rating.
Still, there is no doubt that Zemeckis' version of
A Christmas
Carol is more exhilarating to see than previous adaptations. Any
progressive tactics employed in the visuals are compensated for by an
extremely conservative musical approach by composer Alan Silvestri, for
whom this assignment marked the thirteenth collaboration in a noteworthy
partnership with Zemeckis. Their work for
The Polar Express was
very clearly a practice run for
A Christmas Carol, with every
aspect of the 2004 score (outside of the utilization of several songs in
musical format) bloated to greater proportions for its 2009 sibling. For
the Oscar-bait song anchoring the end of the film and memorably
incorporating Tiny Tim's famous line as its title (as well as serving as
the score's primary theme), Silvestri and lyricist Glen Ballard reunited
and replaced the voice of Josh Groban with the stately tone of Italian
tenor Andrea Bocelli. Although the singer recorded the song in English,
Spanish, and Italian (the first is the only one available on the regular
international album release), the resulting sound, aided by fully
symphonic and choral elegance, is much the same. This time, however,
rather than hearing similarities to John Debney and Andrew Lloyd Webber
in the primary melody, you have an interestingly pervasive influence of
traditional Christmas carols and hymns. It is this circumstance that
guarantees the song and score's effectiveness but also cements their
extremely generic stance. Don't be surprised if you walk away from this
listening experience feeling as though you've heard every moment of it
before. In many ways, you have.
The majority of listeners will associate the totality
of Silvestri's music for
A Christmas Carol with adaptations of
"Deck the Halls," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," "Joy to the World,"
"Hark the Herald Angels Sing," and "Good King Wenceslas," among others.
Not only are two of these melodies the basis for the majority of the
title theme (and thus making for an all-too-appropriate song), but each
is adapted extensively into the bulk of the underscore. The wandering,
harmonious tuba bass lines common to these carols are also a force in
almost all of Silvestri's festive score cues as well. It's not uncommon
for most of a score cue to either twist these traditional pieces
liberally or simply burst out into full, spoken-word choral statements
typical to shopping malls and department stores during the holiday
season. For real-life Scrooges who brush aside Christmas as
commercialized religious buffoonery based on a made-up birthday, this
score's saturation level could be extremely irritating. On the other
hand, despite the obvious reliance on the traditional melodies to carry
at last half of the underscore (as well as all of the sleigh bells and
chimes that define the season's general sound), Silvestri does offer
twenty minutes or so of material that branches out from the path of
predictability. The comedic moments are a cross between the violin
elegance of
Death Becomes Her and the frantic pacing of
Mousehunt. The action and suspense material is an extension of
the lesser-heard parts of
The Polar Express, though the cooing
choral mystery and brutality of brass for those purposes is more
pronounced here. Both "The Clock Tower" and "The Dark Chamber" use
meandering, whimsical string lines and eerie choral tones (including
female solos in the former) to maintain an environment that sounds
remarkably fresh compared to the joyous, wholesome portions of the
score. The action in "Carriage Chase" is pure Silvestri in its style but
infuses a level of John Debney energy that borders on Warner Brothers
cartoon comedy at times, also pulling inspiration from as far back of
Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The opening of "Who Was That Lying
Dead?" resurrects a level of fright and bombast reminiscent of
Van
Helsing or
The Mummy Returns. Because of these interludes and
Silvestri's far more diverse and interesting instrumental employment,
A Christmas Carol is better sustained as a listening experience
than
The Polar Express. Sound quality is outstanding, though this
review is based on a CD copy of the recording master (the commercial
album follows Disney's 2009 pledge to only release its soundtracks in
digital format). Ultimately, had Silvestri relied a bit less on the
traditional melodies, the score could have easily earned four stars; his
choice to lean so heavily on them ensured functionality but is somewhat
tiring after forty minutes.
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| Bias Check: | For Alan Silvestri reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.34 (in 32 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.27
(in 30,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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