Buy it... only if you are prepared to hear James Horner introduce several strong action ideas and decent character themes without providing any satisfying cohesion to their narrative whatsoever.

Avoid it... if you prefer the days when Horner's children's scores exuded a sense of beauty in their orchestrations and magic in their rhythmic flow, even in the action sequences, for Jumanji represents a permanent encroachment of the composer's more serious tendencies on this genre.

Horner

Jumanji: (James Horner) In an attempt to ride the wave of super-popular animal special effects that was caused initially by Jurassic Park, director Joe Johnston brought the board game described in Chris Van Allsburg's children's book to life. The premise of the Jumanji story involves a supernatural game that brings its jungle world to life and puts the actual players in jeopardy of being maimed, or perhaps worse yet, caught in the spell of the game forever. Johnston had brought a child's twist of special effects perspective to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids several years earlier, and unfortunately for Jumanji, the capabilities of the technology had begun to overwhelm storylines by 1995. The massive failure of Jumanji in the theatres during the Christmas season of that year was due in part to the fact that critics failed to see the purpose in establishing the entire premise of a film simply for the sake of special effects, and also due partly to the fact that the film deserved far more than a PG rating since it proved capable at terrifying children in the audience rather than entertaining them. For composer James Horner, who had scored Honey, I Shrunk the Kids for Johnston, Jumanji came at the end of a 1994-1995 season that would reveal the composer's best collective work in his career, and you couldn't blame Horner fanatics for having extremely high hopes for Jumanji. Given the extent to which the film's special effects were advertised in the news, how could Horner screw this one up? Well, he did, and it's difficult to pinpoint exactly why. The pace of the film's script is one that favors one scene of mayhem after another (as each player makes a move), so Horner is left jumping through several hoops without the score or film being able to provide any cohesive sense of completion. Then again, the ability to raise hell in individual scenes of chaos and hysteria was accomplished by Horner with strong results in We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. In Jumanji, however, there is no direction to the music whatsoever, leaving the result as yet another collection of general techniques from the composer that will tend to remind listeners of his prior successes without taking any of those ideas in a newly coordinated direction. A lack of dominant thematic presence is another flaw inherent in this form of presentation, a circumstance exacerbated by generic melodic constructs to begin with.

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Along with Balto the same year, Jumanji marked the end of Horner's era of common association with large-scale children's pictures. A problem is evident in Jumanji, however, in the form of Horner's lost elements of charm and magic that were nearly always present in his superior children's works. Some of it still existed in Balto, but by the time Jumanji rolled around, the enticing rhythms, the sensitivity of themes, and everything 'cute' that had defined Horner's involvement in the genre had been replaced by a mutation of those elements with the grown-up action sensibilities of scores like Apollo 13 and Clear and Present Danger. There is more in common in the action writing of Jumanji with Courage Under Fire than there is with the countless children's scores that Horner penned in the previous decade. Two sadly underdeveloped themes are introduced in Jumanji, one for the innocence of the Alan Parrish character caught in the game (Robin Williams), and one strictly for the action pieces that ultra-ironically resembles Gabriel Yared's identity for the Trojans in Troy note for note. An inspired motif for "The Hunter" is a standout idea, but Horner strays into directionless action material for the mass of the rest of the score. Cues of intentional orchestral chaos, such as "Monkey Mayhem," are more irritating than their cartoonish intent is worth (Horner has never seemed to draw great playful, chaotic humor out of an ensemble the way Jerry Goldsmith could), and the fully orchestral moments of dread rely far too heavily on stock rumblings of deep percussion. Several decent moments exist in the climactic "Jumanji" cue, including some of Horner's better inclusion of the shakuhachi flute for wailing accents over pulsating brass (as in The Mask of Zorro later), but even this cue builds to a dissonant climax worthy of Vibes. After a sensitive flute statement of the Parrish theme in the end titles (reminiscent of The Spitfire Grill and An American Tail), Horner again throws a confusing addition to the mix, adapting some of his Native American chanting from Thunderheart in the final moments. It's easy to get frustrated by the score for Jumanji, because there was so much potential for great action material to rival the excitement of Willow and other Horner classics, and despite toying with several strong ideas in the score, the composer completely fails to do what his great scores of 1995 all did: tie those ideas together into one great, accessible package. **   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.13 (in 98 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.25 (in 184,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.