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Toy Story: (Randy Newman) When pouring endless
amounts of money into the development of the groundbreaking visuals of
the
Toy Story project, Disney and Pixar were unsure if the leap
in computer animation technology was going to be greeted warmly by
audiences. Several years later, with little Woody and Buzz toys all over
the world and a sequel feature film all to themselves, the
Toy
Story franchise had become a monumental success. A delightful blend
of talking toys from yesteryear band together to help save one another
and validate their existences, following the eccentric personalities of
the aforementioned symbols of yesterday and tomorrow. The film would be
the launching pad for Pixar's distinctive animation technology, leading
to several similarly constructed ventures to follow. For Disney, the
established core composer of their animated musicals at the time was
Alan Menken, who was concurrently writing in formula for
Pocahontas. Instead of choosing this tested route, the studios
handed the
Toy Story scoring assignment over to Randy Newman, who
was already established as a composer who could also bring a flair for
happy, laid back songs to a project. While Menken could have matched
Newman's underscore (if not exceeded it in even its slapstick quality),
Menken didn't have the some level of jazzy, jolly heart in his songs as
Newman. As a result, Newman was asked to project his own personality
onto the score by composing a handful of songs he would perform himself
and, thus, add the elements of heart and soul to the film. His voice
represented the happy-go-lucky attitudes of the characters so well that
he would become the official Pixar composer for many projects to come.
Most of these songs were destined to be nominated for awards, and he
would finally take home an Academy Award for his title song for
Monsters, Inc. six years later. As a film,
Toy Story was
an outstanding success in 1995, but as a stand-alone soundtrack on
album, Newman did not receive the same critical praise as
Pocahontas. His fortunes would change in subsequent years,
though. Part of this slower acceptence of Newman's scores, as opposed to
his immediately popular songs, is the unstable, slapstick nature of the
underscore material.
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Regarding the score for
Toy Story, the film's
highly gleeful and attention-deficient pacing causes the orchestral
material to be difficult to grasp. It's a frantic combination of Carl
Stalling music for Warner Brothers cartoons, vintage jazz, and even a
touch of ragtime style. Nobody argues against the effectiveness and
enjoyability of the songs, but the wandering score suffers from the
constant movement of scene and action in the film. Thus, you end up with
a highly irregular collection of mini-cues strung together, often with
nothing in common other than their vigorous performances by the
ensemble. Similar difficulties would arise in Newman's later related
scores, namely
A Bug's Life and
Monsters, Inc., but the
Toy Story scores seem to have an acute case of hyper-activity. It
washes out when you attempt to determine if there is any cohesive whole
to the score in a traditional sense of constructs and development. Aside
from the problematic nature of scoring for fast-paced, animated action,
Newman compounds the problems by failing to adequately adapt his title
theme into the score itself. Other than a short swing section of the
song's jazzy movement in "Woody and Buzz," there is little to hear of
the title song's theme throughout the score. Also aiding the otherwise
incoherent score are a few standout cues of distinct personality. The
Pixar logo music is included at the start. A touch of Elmer Bernstein is
heard in the Western rhythm and theme for Woody in "Andy's Birthday." A
short statement of theme inspired by
Apollo 13 (and maybe even
Basil Poledouris'
Wind) can be heard for Buzz at the end of the
track of his name. The madness heard in the scenes with the mutant toys
at Sid's house is scored with particularly well-developed brass rhythms.
The militaristic motif provided for the toy soldiers in "On the Move" is
also well executed. But when you place these snippets of creativity in
between the mass of jumpy, slapstick, and generic music, it's difficult
to recall any highlights from the score. The three songs at the
beginning of the album (joined by the duet with Lyle Lovett at the end)
offer Newman's talents at their best, all of them surpassing the quality
of the score by leaps and bounds. Fans of the movies will want the
crisply recorded songs, and rightfully so. The score becomes incidental
and, for much of its length, unnecessary.
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| Bias Check: | For Randy Newman reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating
is 3.06 (in 17 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.11
(in 20,737 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes lyrics, but has no extra information about the score or film.
