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Filmtracks Editorial Review:
The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle: (Mark Mothersbaugh) With a fond following of nostalgic fans from the original television series featuring Rocky and Bullwinkle, it was inevitable that the two would end up in a modern, live-action film. Like many other cartoons gone live-action, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle was no less a disaster. The film was an embarrassment to its talented cast, and with consistenly wretched reviews, the film spiraled out of the public light before it even got started. Consequently obscured, therefore, was the score by Mark Mothersbaugh, whose credits had previously included the recent Rugrats film, which fared a bit better at the box office. With one listen to the score for The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, it is easy to understand what went wrong with the film. Not for many years has a film score been so corny and slapstick; with a new punchline waiting for your ears every thirty seconds. The score itself is a massive jumble of countless dozens of very short cues. With any sort of silly comedy, and especially an animated one, these kinds of choppy cues are to be expected. Many of them build personality in the music by quoting other famous themes. The original "Rocky, The Flying Squirrel" theme by Frank Comstock is rearranged by Mothersbaugh and put to extensive use throughout the score. Other themes are used for quite, one-liner quotes, including "Hooray for Hollywood," "America the Beautiful," "Secret Agent Man," etc, etc. These interpolations are front and center, meant for the obvious comedic value they could offer to the film. Mothersbaugh's original cues, which are sometimes pieced together to form five or so minutes of quote-less material, are very reminiscent of the style of John Debney for such similar flops as Inspector Gadget and My Favorite Martian. A reasonably-sized studio orchestra is combined with a choir to form the petty-hearted and often prancing underscore. Occasionally, Mothersbaugh lets the players rip with full ensemble performance of a bar or two music, making for thirty to fifty seconds of great action/comedy music. These moments, mostly contained in the fifth and sixth tracks, are greatly outnumbered by the slapstick nature of the rest of the cues. The pop song at the end, tailered to the theme of the film and performed by Lisa McClowry, is also a highlight. The construction of the album took some work in order to piece so many very short cues into a listenable format. For the most part, these splices are not recognizable, and their assembling should be commended. The only sharp cut to a cue is at the end of the "Secret Agent Man" take-off. Overall, the promotional album should serve as a mighty testament to Mothersbaugh's abilities. Because the album is promotional, it is not widely available. The only fans I would specifically recommend the album to would be those who own and enjoy the Inspector Gadget and My Favorite Martian promo albums, because The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is very similar to Debney's efforts for those equivalent films. For the purpose of showing off Mothersbaugh, it's a good album, but the majority of film score fans will likely be highly annoyed by the cliche-rich music apart from the film. With his talents, Mothersbaugh could very easily compose something resembling the complexity of Chicken Run in the near future. ***
* Contains music not composed by Mothersbaugh
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