Buy it... if you have always admired Mark Isham's outstanding and broad Americana strokes of Fly Away Home and seek an overdue extension of that wholesome sound.

Avoid it... if any dose of sugar-coated orchestral adventure fits too sentimental a mould for your liking, especially if it casually blends bluegrass instruments with African vocals.

Isham

Racing Stripes: (Mark Isham) Without DVD players in sport utility vehicles and films like Racing Stripes in the theatres, how would adults ever manage to keep their obnoxious children under control these days? Starting with Babe and National Velvet, a long list of children's films of this sort could be mentioned, with Racing Stripes taking the well worn, standardized plotline of "orphaned animal meets other talking barnyard creatures and proves itself in a competition that redeems its species as well as the heartland family that raised it." The animals in this particular film are indeed real, and Hollywood took yet another opportunity to confuse adults who see the CGI lips of the animals flail around without the corresponding facial expressions that you've come to expect from looking at talking humans. Perhaps if the zebra that fancies itself as a race horse was for some reason shot at the end (another familiar animal movie conclusion), then there would be something compelling about the film. That said, it defied mostly negative reviews by tripling its budget in worldwide grosses. The great news for movie-goers who enjoy Racing Stripes is that composer Mark Isham didn't seem to care about any of the cliches or yawn-inducing dialogue inherent in the project. The assignment marked a triumphant return to the genre of "child helps animal" that remains the subject of Isham's most famous and long commercially unreleased score, Fly Away Home. Wandering throughout various genres in his career, Isham is an interesting study because he is able to write stirring music for Americana topics at their finest while also being capable of countering with extremely mundane and underachieving music for less wholesome genres. While the composer does go the route of Fly Away Home and Dolphin Tale at times, he's still best known for his gritty, electronically-defined thrillers, scores that rarely achieve much positive impact outside of context. Without a doubt, though, Racing Stripes represents Isham at his best, with sensibility and inspiration without an overdose of sentimentality. In this fully orchestral music, he infuses the safely tonal and melodic genre standards with just enough instrumental and vocal flavor to keep you listening, including for good measure a few of those rhythmic ensemble outbursts that made Fly Away Home a cult favorite. The result is a score that was considered by some to be the most surprisingly superior effort of Isham's entire career.

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While one of Isham's themes for Racing Stripes is incorporated into the song performed by Sting that appears over the end credits, the vocal doesn't do the composer's idea justice. The fully orchestral statements of this primary identity, often accompanied by rambling snare, pounding timpani, and crashing cymbals, are victorious in an innocently wholesome but highly satisfying manner. Simplistic in structure and sometimes reminiscent of Jerry Goldsmith's 1980's and 1990's equivalents, the composer's array of themes relies upon the intrinsic warmth and pleasant balance of instruments to convey their good intentions, taking the standard methods of John Debney but transcending that composer's procedural tone. Remarkably, Isham avoids the saccharine melodrama that you expect to hear saturate a score like this one. In its more subtle moments, Racing Stripes offers two interesting ideas: first, a bluegrass representation of the Kentucky setting (provided by slide guitar, jaw harp, and banjo) and secondly, an African influence in vocals and percussion that offers the zebra its distinction of heritage. The bluegrass moments may seem too hokey at first, but their absence in the second half of the score is a bit of a disappointment. The African vocals, with solo voice similar to James Newton Howard's usage in Hidalgo and The Interpreter, are the best twist in the music, heard at a distance throughout the score (and sometimes with cooing choir) in moments of inspiration and dreams. The underlying percussive momentum of the score joins the vocals in the triumphant moment of victory for the zebra in the big race at the end. It would be interesting to know if Isham had any thoughts about the speculation over the racial implications of this vocal application (essentially representing the black athlete in a white-dominated sport). The adventuresome "The Blue Moon Races" and "The Big Race" are highlights, the latter featuring quick blasts of brass that will remind you of James Horner's vintage children's scores. Another positive attribute of Isham's Racing Stripes is the avoidance of weaker, slapstick humor. The comedy relief is restrained mostly to the mobster/faux-Italian representations of the talking pelican in "A Pelican Named Goose" and "Goose Makes a Hit on the Iron Horse." Consistently solid performances from start to finish make Racing Stripes a very pleasant and surprising equal to Fly Away Home, perhaps even eclipsing its predecessor on album. That product contains the two end credits songs by Sting and Bryan Adams, as well as a generous portion of Isham's score. You have to set aside your biases against this genre to appreciate this unexpected entry among the best scores of 2005. *****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Mark Isham reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.9 (in 21 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.88 (in 8,084 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.