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National Treasure: (Trevor Rabin) Probably serving as
nothing more than a poorly rendered preview of Ron Howard's 2005 adaptation
of The Da Vinci Code,
National Treasure is a ridiculous piece of eye
candy that requires that you suspend nearly every practically minded thought
in your head if you want to buy the film's premise. A modern investigator
with outstanding intuition (whose family seems fond of naming their children
after the founding fathers of their country) does what acclaimed scientists
for centuries have tried and failed in doing: discover the path to the Holy
Grail of fabled treasures. Along the way, he has to stumble upon hidden
shipwrecks, steal America's Declaration of Independence, avoid a
nasty-as-usual Sean Bean, and happen upon vast cave systems that have
somehow seemed to elude geologists with all of today's technology. The
far-fetched nature of the film --not to mention the extensive rip-off
implications-- and skeptical reviews from critics didn't stop the film from
barreling to the top of the box office charts for a few weeks in the tepid
Christmas season of films in 2004. Being a Jerry Bruckheimer production,
perhaps this eye candy without a brain is simply the most recent in a long
and successful string of films that the famed producer has lured the world
with despite an obvious lack of logic, and if you crown
Armageddon as
the king of these endeavors, then it should come as no surprise that former
Yes member and Media Ventures associate Trevor Rabin is the composer of
choice for
National Treasure. While many similar artists from the
Hans Zimmer school of musical sensibilities have since graduated to bigger
and better things (namely John Powell and Harry Gregson-Williams, among
others), Rabin seems content stirring the same old pot of Media Venture
samples and simplistic rhythms and themes for films that call for that
dumbed-down candy-packaged approach. Without a doubt, Rabin is perfect for
National Treasure; his usual sound is exactly what audiences (and
even film music collectors) expect to hear when they go to the theatres
prepared to suspend their belief in logic. Regardless of whether you can
enjoy this music or not, it's difficult to say that the fit between film and
score isn't nice and cozy.
The traditional film music fans will argue that any film
deserves more than a Rabin-packaged score, but given the quality of the
film, what more could you expect? The surprising aspect of Rabin's result
for
National Treasure is that it actually ranks highly compared to
most of his recycled sounds. That doesn't mean that the
National
Treasure score isn't just more recycled electronic and orchestral
ramblings... in fact, it is. But at least it's assembled into a somewhat
more palatable form than some of his works. It has the
Armageddon
effect going for it... the one in which you go from pretty, simplistic
orchestral statements of theme in one cue to metal-slapping charges of
electric guitar-laden wildness in the next, and so forth. Rabin seems like
he doesn't want to let go of either sound, so in the first half of
National Treasure, you hear the underdeveloped anthems performed with
the pseudo-sincerity that comes with a product that doesn't quite sound
either entirely orchestral or entirely synthetic. These cues are pleasant,
if not simply rehashes of music burned into our memories, and similar ghosts
of scores past are raised for the latter half of the score in which Rabin
wields the electric guitars like a plastic sword in the hands of an
8-year-old child. The anthem's moments are the kind that you need to extract
for a compilation of their own; the first performance is heard with the
customary snare in "Ben" and eventually flourishes in the finale "Treasure"
cue, an inspirational sendoff. Rabin almost busts out with a new sound,
making flashing moves into the arena of Thomas Newman keyboarding in
"Library of Congress" and at the start of "The Chase." The "Declaration of
Independence" cue, though, is perhaps symbolic of the (rather short) album's
weakness, with its beauty sandwiched in between daunting, rampaging
electronic guitars. If only Rabin could stick with one mode or the other for
an entire blockbuster such as this, then perhaps we could forget that the
score sounds terribly recycled and enjoy the performances from the
electronic or large-scale orchestral elements alone. Unfortunately, he
hasn't found a truly balanced melding for those two opposing elements yet.
Still,
National Treasure works for the film and, in its half a dozen
or so mundane, but peasant orchestral tracks, Rabin pulls off a decent
score.
***
| Bias Check: | For Trevor Rabin reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 2.33 (in 9 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.67
(in 11,447 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes a list of players, but no extra information about the score or film.
