Buy it... if you trust Patrick Doyle to filter the vintage comedy, fantasy, and drama styles of Danny Elfman and James Horner through his own instrumentally diverse and lyrically consistent voice.

Avoid it... if you have little patience for effectively heartwarming but ultimately derivative children's music that deviates from its wholesome tones only occasionally for a few wicked comedy sideshows.

Doyle

Nanny McPhee: (Patrick Doyle) Significant changes were in store for fans of Christianna Brand's "Nurse Matilda" books of the 1960's when their title character was adapted by actress Emma Thompson into the Nanny McPhee franchise of movies starting in 2005. With Thompson in the title role, the first Nanny McPhee film introduced a variant of the mythical nanny to a family in 19th Century England. A widowed man (played by Colin Firth) with seven children is having difficulty controlling his young clan, the little brats tormenting and scaring off seventeen separate nannies before the mysterious arrival of Nanny McPhee, whose blend of magic and humor manages to bring them under control. Complicating matters is the fact that the father has been given a month to find a new wife or lose the money afforded to him by a relative to remain in custody of his children. Inevitably, an evil gold-digging woman is set up with him but the wedding is spoiled by the ensemble cast before the likable young maid steps in predictably at the end to save the family. Regardless of the major alterations to the story for the purposes of Nanny McPhee, critical response and box office returns were generous for a movie that grossed almost $100 million more than it cost to make. Immediately charmed by the script was composer Patrick Doyle, who had professed to loving wholesome family pictures of the past and long wished to be involved with a project like Nanny McPhee. The assignment admittedly presented several challenges for the composer, its plot requiring a cohesive balance of comedy, fantasy, and drama. Another factor was that Nanny McPhee followed the exhausting process of scoring Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire for Doyle, and you do hear some very slight similarities in thematic structure between the composer's theme for Harry Potter's family and one of the three ideas in the later score. And, as you might expect, you encounter several passages in Nanny McPhee that recall the composer's own tender voice, reach back as far as The Little Princess and foreshadowing Jig in his expression of melodic progressions typical to his career. In its whole, however, the score is an intriguing merging of influences from the works of Danny Elfman (in the case of the comedy and some of the fantasy material) and James Horner (in the drama and other fantasy portions). Despite these blatant stylistic tugs, though, Doyle still manages to instill the kind of instrumental creativity and lyrical consistency that his listeners have come to expect, yielding positively engaging listening experience.

The robust comedy rhythms of a carnival nature in Nanny McPhee are saturated with Elfman's mannerisms, featuring in a "No More Nannies" cue that embodies a style ratio of 90% Elfman to 5% Doyle. Fortunately, the Scottish composer very competently adapts this sound throughout the score, applying high children's choir tones sparingly enough to enhance the score without diluting it. The harpsichord, bassoon, and tuba expression of mischief in "They've Eaten the Baby!" eventually becomes a raucous jazz rhythm of total comedic entropy in the wedding mayhem scene, "Bees and Cakes," saxophone, piano, creative percussion, and rowdy brass joining the fray. The straight fantasy and drama sequences in the remainder of the score present Doyle's three themes for Nanny McPhee. The first, while born in the opening comedy routine, matures in the first half of "Secret Toast and Jam" and "The Pink Chair," representing the family with a slightly formal tone of yesteryear but sensitive enough to suffice in contemporary times. The most stereotypically Doyle-like theme, using rising major-key progressions heard throughout everything from The Last Legion to La Ligne Droite, represents McPhee herself. It occupies the first half of "I Did Knock" in many colorful guises, ominously carried by bass strings for the initial trepidation about her sudden arrival. In "Goodnight, Children" and "The Room at the Top of the Stairs," Doyle expands the duties of this melody to include lighter fare, the whimsy of celesta lending credence to her use of magic. The most memorable theme in Nanny McPhee, however, is the overarching identity for the entire film, a remarkably heartwarming throwback to the melodies by Horner for his vintage children's film scores. Previewed in the latter half of "Secret Toast and Jam," this theme is fully introduced in "The Girl in the Carriage" and becomes a powerhouse in the final third of the film. The duo of "The Lady in Blue" and "Snow in August" feature nine minutes of this remarkable idea, the latter cue (seemingly assembled from several shorter recordings) the highlight of the score and rotating through several choral, tingling percussion-aided string presentations of the theme before closing it out with an upbeat fanfare rendition. The connections to Horner's style in this material may be too thick for some listeners, but when translated through Doyle's voice, it is about as innocuously entertaining as such genre music can be. In "Snow in August" is a hummed vocal reprise of "Mrs. Brown's Lullaby," a lovely though short song related to the main theme and featuring Thompson's lyrics. Overall, Nanny McPhee will sound derivative to film music collectors, but Doyle handles these references with class and produces a solid score that unfortunately is not referenced by James Newton Howard for the concept's 2010 sequel. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Patrick Doyle reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.85 (in 26 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.48 (in 20,137 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.