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SpaceCamp: (John Williams) When anybody in the
summer of 1986 thought about NASA and the American space shuttles, their
memories would become fixed on the sight of the Challenger exploding
tragically against a blue sky on a crisp morning earlier that year. And
yet, in an incredibly bad stroke of luck, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration was just finishing up its collaboration with ABC
Motion Pictures to release
SpaceCamp, a comedy thriller about a
bunch of bratty kids who are accidentally launched into space aboard a
real shuttle. The true-to-life summer camp teaches bright young kids
everything about flying a shuttle and claims that the best of the lot
could actually do it. The film spends over an hour trudging through
endlessly boring and predictable character conversations between the
kids. Kate Capshaw is the unfortunate leader of this group of twits, and
she gets propelled into space along with the group when a robot
conveniently launches them unexpectedly. Anybody who believes that NASA
would actually allow a group of these kids into a shuttle during a
booster rocket test might find some merit in this ridiculous movie. You
almost wish that the shuttle had blown up all over again and saved the
country from the potential of these kids spawning a future generation.
At any rate, being a children's movie, everything turns out fine in the
end. That is, except for audience reactions. The studio delayed the
production a few months because of the Challenger explosion, but that
didn't save the film from quietly slipping through theatres after
grossing only $10 million despite a hefty marketing campaign. As
laughable as it is, one might wonder why composer John Williams was so
enthusiastic about his involvement with the project. This would be his
lone film score in the years of 1985 and 1986, and while the assignment
may seem like an odd choice when considering the low quality of the
film, it makes sense if you look at the direction Williams was taking
with this career. Part of his limited score production at the time was
due to scheduling issues (including the endless delays of
Hook).
But since becoming involved with the Boston Pops at the start of the
decade, and achieving almost God-like status on the conductor's podium,
he began writing themes for concerts and special events that were all
extensions of his
Star Wars-born orchestral bombast. In the
mid-1980's, Williams discovered this highly patriotic style of concert
writing that would eventually lead to specialty themes such as "Liberty
Fanfare," "Celebrate Discovery," "Jubilee 350," his Olympics work, and
even the "Mission" theme for NBC News. His music for Steven Spielberg's
popular
Amazing Stories television episode, "The Mission," was
also saturated with this sound.
In his film scores, this uniquely American style of
writing would debut in
SpaceCamp and forever be best represented
by that score. Between the concert track and album's finale, Williams'
patriotic writing is at its very best. The grandeur and exuberance of
these fully orchestral statements of broad, hopeful themes are what
define Williams' career, and these two similarly-minded performances in
SpaceCamp save the entire soundtrack from its otherwise average
underscore. Despite Williams' best intentions, much of this score dwells
in non-descript regions of the composer's writing that takes
considerable pages from his disaster scores of the early 1970's, as well
as some of the less interesting underscore from the original
Star
Wars film. The suspense presented in the latter half of the score
("White Sands" is very similar in style to
Jurassic Park) fails
to state itself with effectiveness, with flat performances and
surprisingly poor sound quality hindering significant portions of the
whole. Once spoiled by the brass fanfares of the title theme, the
training cues do their best to mute their heroism with restrained, but
still hopeful brass solos. The identity of the kids really isn't
addressed, even in the woodwind and string interludes over flowing harp;
Williams seems to have his sights set on the expanse of space and little
else. The only exception is the outrageously dated "Training Montage"
cue, in which Williams poorly infuses a modern light rock rhythm with a
drum machine. Some of the mechanized elements in the film are handled
with subtle motifs, including the robot and the shuttle itself. A cute
rising and falling string figure introduced in "In Orbit" cleverly
represents weightlessness. The remainder of his score is pleasing
despite the fact that listeners have heard every element of the music
rendered with better results in other works, on screen or in concert.
There are several outstanding moments in
SpaceCamp, but a flat
recording and lack of stylish performance aspects are the ultimate
downfall. A CD album was not released until 1992, when a limited, 1,000
copy run was produced in Japan to match original LP contents. This
BMG/RCA "club" album escalated rapidly in value and sold in auction for
over $200. In 2010, Intrada Records was able to license and reprint an
identical presentation for a 3,000-copy run that sold out within a
single day. Unfortunately, the label's efforts to improve the sound
quality are only moderately successful and a few notable cues from the
score remain missing from the jumbled selection of cues (by necessity).
Overall, while the score would be a very strong find at normal used CD
prices, or even at new CD bargain prices, its outdated sound and lack of
distinct ideas reduce its attractiveness. It's an admirable effort from
Williams, with two incredible cues, but you'll hear everything in
SpaceCamp to a much finer degree in other places.
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