![]() |
|
| ||||||||||
| | Newest Major Reviews: | . | | This Week's Most Popular Reviews: | | Best-Selling Albums: | ||
| . |
1. Nim's Island 2. The Life Before Her Eyes 3. Horton Hears a Who! 4. Leatherheads 5. The Spiderwick Chronicles | . | . |
1. Moulin Rouge 2. Gladiator 3. POTC: Curse of the Black Pearl 4. Star Wars: A New Hope 5. Edward Scissorhands |
6. Pearl Harbor 7. Schindler's List 8. Titanic 9. Braveheart 10. Home Alone | . | . |
1. Varèse Sarabande 25th 2. The Last of the Mohicans 3. Legends of the Fall 4. Schindler's List 5. LOTR: Return of the King (Set) |
|
|
![]()
Filmtracks Recommends: Buy it... only if you are prepared to hear James Horner introduce several strong action ideas and themes without providing any satisfying cohesion whatsoever. Avoid it... if you prefer the days of Horner's children's scores when there was magic in the strings and beauty in the orchestral rhythms, even in the action sequences. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Along with Balto the same year, Jumanji would mark 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rhythms, the sensitivity of themes, and everything 'cute' that had defined Horner's involvement in the genre had been replaced by a mutation of those elements with the grown-up action sensibilities of scores like Apollo 13 and Clear and Present Danger.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 strangely resembles one of Gabriel Yared's Troy themes note-for-note. An inspired motif for "The Hunter" is a standout cue, 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, 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 Jumanji, Horner completely fails to do what his great scores of 1995 all did: tie all those ideas into one great (or even listenable) package. **
Insert includes no extra information about the score or film. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|