Buy it... if you seek Thomas Newman's successful introduction to the animation genre, arguably one of his most dynamic, diverse, and pleasantly accessible scores.

Avoid it... if your love of Newman's music related to the strictly dark and dissonant aspects of his bittersweet compositions for more serious topics.

Newman

Finding Nemo: (Thomas Newman) The Disney/Pixar collaboration steamed ahead with an adventure above, below, and beyond the sea in 2003, utilizing continuously improving digital rendering technologies to produce non-musical animation films of superior quality. The premise of Finding Nemo involves the relationship between a father and son tropical fish that get separated when the son is captured and placed in a dentist's office aquarium. The ensuing search and rescue organized by the father fish is a mass effort by swimming and flying creatures of all sizes and personalities. While the film certainly features the appropriate amount of comedy and silliness to keep a young child entertained, Finding Nemo follows a trend clearly defined by Lilo & Stitch, often telling a children's tale from an adult's point of view, with hazardous relational situations and emotional soul-searching putting stress on a disjointed family. This trait in Finding Nemo caused the project to skirt the boundary of the drama realm for many viewers, earning it greater attention during the following awards season. In these regards, composer Randy Newman may not have been as effective as his cousin, Thomas Newman, in finding the right tone for Finding Nemo's score. Randy Newman had been the staple of Disney and Pixar cooperative ventures up to this point; his music for the Toy Story films, A Bug's Life, and Monsters, Inc. set an easily distinguishable, positive tone for that series of stories, culminating in a long-awaited Academy Award for Monsters, Inc.. With the subject matter in Finding Nemo coming from that different perspective, director Andrew Stanton insisted that the more seriously-inclined cousin, Thomas, write the score for the film. Newman was best known for his darkly dramatic efforts for The Shawshank Redemption, American Beauty, The Player, and Road to Perdition, and when it came time for him to enter the realm of animation, he was wildcard, especially considering the fact that many of his scores of the decade were underachieving, ambient works. Stanton, a writer and regular voice on the previous Pixar films, claims that he wrote the story for Finding Nemo while listening to previous Thomas Newman scores, and thus was inspired to use the composer in a surprise choice for the assignment.

The surprise in seeing Thomas Newman's name on the advertisements for Finding Nemo came not just because of the relation between Tom and Randy, but rather because Tom's scores had a history of being bittersweet, tragic, melancholy, and occasionally downright sour. Even Tom's more fruitfully pleasant scores often come with a subversive or darkly tilted edge, a byproduct of his nervous, off-kilter rhythmic style of composition. While likely capable of providing a jazzy, upbeat score, Tom's involvement with the project immediately raised questions about whether or not he could resonate through audiences with the same happy-go-lucky attitude of Randy's bouncy scores and songs. "I was very scared to do it; I'd never done animation before," responds Newman. When addressing Randy's role in the series of films, Tom continues, "My cousin Randy has done the four previous ones. That was a daunting thing to come up against, because I so enjoyed his music." In the end, however, Tom didn't have to match Randy's music, for he did not write an original song for the film, nor did the film really require exuberance of a Randy type. Tom's lengthy, thoughtful score is a clear extension of his exact styles, staying true to his rhythmic and percussive preferences without much attempt to step out of his own comfort zone and produce something along the lines of Randy's work. As a result, Finding Nemo is the perfect score with which to study the regular stylistic habits of Tom Newman, from the forceful beats of his rhythms to the completely bizarre and wildly creative electronics and percussion employed in his ensemble. The nervous, perpetual movement of the orchestral performances so well represents the nature of fish in general, and the pastoral elements of Newman's piano and strings capture the spirit of the search and the alliances necessary to make it work. A more serious tone, and perhaps an ominous one for young audiences, defines Tom's work here, even though his major key renditions of his usual styles substantially block out much of the bittersweet aspect in his writing and steer the project towards the mainstream. Instrumental diversity is key to the success of this score, as well as the sometimes jumbled and frenetic changes of pace with which Newman steers through the narrative. With so many personalities representing a broad range of aquatic life, the diverse tones and swirling movement of his recording is appropriate for the topic even if it's occasionally mind-boggling on its own.

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Newman accomplishes his fruitful transition to animation by inserting sequences of jazzy funk into his music. His effort to transform his plucky American Beauty sound into a more dynamic, optimistic variant is successful, partially because he sustains the major key performances for longer sequences and partially because he uses a slightly more light-footed array of electronic instruments to make it sound vaguely hip. A tad more jazz is evident as well, balancing out the significant amount of character-building, string underscore that occupies the playing time. Despite several lengthy sequences of somewhat scary material, Newman's return to the staggered string and piano rhythms (which he performs himself on the piano, as usual) is an extension of what his late-arriving fans fell in love with in American Beauty and several car commercials that followed. The weakness of Tom's effort, as you might be able to guess, is the lack of dominant theme for the film, based on the song or otherwise. The identity of the score is created and maintained through the composer's overarching style of writing and orchestration, and this technique will not satisfy some listeners (who will label the work as unorganized). Still, he does build several effective motifs that more than adequately define the film and place the work solidly in his repertoire, but not to the extent that typical Disney films provide. The album is an hour-long, 40-track whopper, with 39 of the cues being short, Newman entries. The final two cues are particularly redemptive in their softer tones. A couple of loudly mixed quotes from the film are detractions from the score's presentation, although some sound effects straight from Skywalker Sound offer some soothing oceanic ambience in other cues. The album finishes with a jazzy Robbie Williams performance of the Bobby Darin classic "Beyond the Sea" (a pseudo take-off of "Under the Sea"?). Overall, the phenomenal diversity of Tom Newman's selection of dozens upon dozens of specialty instruments and electronic sounds, as well as those rumbling pianos and choppy strings, is what floats his music for Finding Nemo. As unlikely as his involvement with the project may have initially seemed, he made it work, and even if it didn't resemble any other Disney score in history, you can't help but applaud the risk that was taken, as well as Tom Newman's answer to the challenge. The Oscar-nominated recognition for this music would launch him into several subsequent children's scores, including his multi-nominated work for WALL·E in 2008. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Thomas Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.14 (in 28 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.13 (in 53,317 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.