Filmtracks Recommends:
Buy it... on either the commercial product or the score-only bootleg alternatives if you have seen the film and clearly know what you're getting into, even if you're an enthusiast of Hans Zimmer's early electronic style. Avoid it... on the commercial album if you have no interest in the majority of obnoxious songs utilized in the film and want only the roughly ten minutes of decent Zimmer material to be found on the bootleg albums. Filmtracks Editorial Review:
Toys: (Hans Zimmer/Trevor Horn) Reportedly the first idea for a film that director Barry Levinson had ever wanted to make, Toys was a dozen years in the making and just a few weeks in the crumbling. Hailed as a shining star right before its opening in 1992, the movie teamed Levinson once again with Robin Williams (the wildly successful pairing from Good Morning, Vietnam), Joan Cusack, and Michael Gambon as an evil "General" (long before stepping into the role of Dumbledore after the death of Richard Harris in the Harry Potter franchise). But despite a stunning array of colors and an equally intriguing set of socio-political ideas, Toys failed miserably in its task. It's tale of a family battle over an idyllic toy factory, a struggle for control of the manufacturing focus between the benevolent son (Williams), who wants to continue the wholesome nature of the business, and the militaristic uncle (Gambon), who has grandiose and insane visions of producing violent, dangerous toys of war. There are really too many parallels and sub-plots in Toys to discuss; themes of espionage and domestic terrorism surely keep the film from being recommended to children, and Levinson's reasons for making the picture are still unclear decades years later. The lack of narrative cohesion in the film leads to a mesmerizing and confusing overall experience, a problem compounded by the music chosen for its soundtrack. A series of new age-related avenues were explored in Toys, with Enya's dreamy "Ebundae" perfectly summing up the cloudy but distantly optimistic atmosphere of the story. Levinson had found success in his work with composer Hans Zimmer for Rain Man in 1988, and the budding composer was asked to provide an extension of Enya's then-super popular new age sound (along with the vague Celtic tones that often came with it) in his largely electronic score for Toys. Like the film, however, Zimmer's contribution (produced with long-time arranger and associate Trevor Horn in what was perhaps his most significant collaborative project in the formative years leading up to the Media Ventures enterprise) would suffer from a similar lack of purpose or direction in its development of anything more than a vague atmosphere of emotional glaze. Zimmer and Horn split the composing duties on Toys, with a handful of other artists contributing to the eclectic sounds of the score and its adjoining songs. Generally, Zimmer seems to have based his approach to the music on the joyful atmosphere of Robin Williams' vision of what the toy factory should be. While seeming to wander aimlessly at times, the composer contents himself in extending a friendly hand in the pleasant tone of the score. The opening and closing song, "The Closing of the Year," begins with a matronly lullaby that extends into a performance by a children's choir. The popularity of this song has been surprisingly strong in successive decades, artists such as Placido Domingo and Sarah Brightman performing it live in concert for years to come. An elegant, orchestrally backed opera piece serves as "Alsatia's Lullaby," with a tragic heart (appropriate for Cusack's character) and beautiful melody. Zimmer goes on to create a primary theme for the score itself; "Let Joy and Innocence Prevail" contains the recurring melody that holds the emotional scenes of the film together. Its simple, easily digestible rhythms and, once again, pleasant tones are offered in a five minute suite of Media Ventures-styled easy listening. Some of these ideas from "Let Joy and Innocence Prevail" (especially with a flute or other real-life solo instrument in the lead) would resurface in an increasingly mature form in Beyond Rangoon two years later. Perhaps the more interesting cues in Toys for the majority of Zimmer collectors are those that accompany the sinister side of the story. The Nazi-like march devised for "The General," with many darker ideas foreshadowing The Peacemaker, is one of uncomplicated minor key alternations in grand electronic style (one that could easily terrify a young child!), with synthesizers programmed to such harsh extents that one might wonder if Vangelis was in the room at the time of recording. Another cue featuring consistent snare use is "Battle Introduction," in which the good toys, in their impending battle with the evil toys, are stirred to heroic deeds by a Rocketeer-like trumpet theme and a Scottish spirit of bagpipes that further stretches the imagination in the score's unfocused scope. Reprises of these themes resurface throughout both the film and commercial album, making the actual total time of unique score material quite minimal. Although the Zimmer contributions to Toys described above remain interesting, if not at least average in quality for the composer, the film and its album takes a distinctly sour turn in the plethora of auxiliary material recorded or adopted for inclusion. Aside from Enya's yawn-inducing song (by no means a better entry in her career), listeners also hear a touch of Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 1 at the very opening and a Tori Amos performance of "The Happy Worker," a piece arranged by Trevor Horn. Many of the more bizarre elements in Toys are indeed the work of Horn, who also, along with Bruce Wooley, writes another pop-like, distortion-laced song, "Workers," for enhanced punch. They also co-write "The Mirror Song," a centerpiece number in the film that has an equally toxic pop-culture effect on the film and album. The hideous dance number "Welcome to the Pleasuredome" (mixed with snippets of score from the battle sequences) is another regrettably noisy cue, although this one has at least become the theme song of a well-known professional wrestler in Japan since its appearance in Toys. The reprise that closes out the album further dilutes the product with more pop wailing and disintegration of Zimmer's music into an attempt to further tap into mainstream appeal. When you put all of this material together, whether considering the film or album, you get a curious sense of dissatisfaction that seems built to frustrate Zimmer collectors more than the mainstream. The album for Toys was clearly aimed away from score collectors, partly because of the obnoxious non-score material throughout but also due to the inclusion of a few snippets of dialogue over score tracks, too. Ironically, one of the guilty pleasures of the commercial album is Grace Jones' possibly creepy vocal performance of Zimmer's title piece, "Let Joy and Innocence Prevail." Many movie-goers will recognize Jones, the tall and sleek African-American model in Conan the Destroyer and A View to a Kill (and a popular icon, interestingly, in the male homosexual musical community) as an actress, but her raspy singing voice tells the story of Toys with a distinctly grisly touch of fantasy. You can't help but cringe when you hear her ferociously perform the lyric "...for I am fearless" at the 3:46 mark. Instead of being comforted by her performance, you hear the person who Arnold Schwarzenegger deemed as the only female co-star who was "too tough" for him, and her tone is thus a bizarre fit for Zimmer's fluffy instrumental backing. Overall, Toys is a wildly incongruous and curious failure. It's one of those rare Zimmer works that sold so well on album in stores that you saw it overflowing in used-CD bins for a decade, and yet you rarely ever heard the score discussed in film music venues. Almost entirely shunned by score collectors, Toys is a venture to be explored with care if you are an enthusiast of the composer's superior early music, for it could either irritate you greatly with its diversity or become a guilty-pleasure mainstay of the portion of your Zimmer collection dedicated to this electronic period. Relief for fans of Zimmer and the concept came with the release of the second volume of the composer's "Follow Your Dreams" compilation albums in 1997. The series of two albums was supposed to be followed by a third, but that never happened, and there has always remained debate about whether Zimmer had a hand in helping this source material escape into the secondary market so that bootleggers could produce these and subsequent Media Ventures "promotional" compilations. As one could expect, the bootleggers immediately took the score-only cues from those compilations and added them to the salvageable material from the commercial album and created a shorter, but score-centric presentation of Toys. The first "Follow Your Dreams" album, sharing time with Mark Mancina's early scores, was the source for the instrumental backgrounds for "The Closing of the Year" on these immediate bootlegs. From the second compilation album came four additional cues from Toys, all of which being original Zimmer, non-song work. An extended recording of "The General" without dialogue, a version of "Battle Introduction" also without dialogue, the larger instrumental mix of "Let Joy and Innocence Prevail" under Grace Jones' performance, and an instrumental version of the opening "The Closing of the Year" song are all available on that album in excellent sound quality. Unfortunately, this bootleg still has Trevor Horn's more unlistenable pop material sprinkled throughout, so be forewarned that you may encounter challenging passages no matter which route you take with Toys. If you desire the bootleg, then it probably wouldn't hurt to also find the commercial release because of its historically reasonable used price (as low as $1.00). That said, if not for the operatic theme for Alsatia, your best material from Toys is that which appears on "Follow Your Dreams, Volume II." Still, the entire package yields frustration because of how it was compiled for the film, so be sure of your convictions in regards to early Zimmer music before taking the plunge on this one.
Music as Heard on the 1992 Geffen Album: * Music as Heard on the 1997 Bootlegs: *** Overall: ** Track Listings (1992 Geffen Album):
Total Time: 47:21
* contains score material composed by Hans Zimmer ** contains score material composed by Hans Zimmer and Trevor Horn *** song composed by Trevor Horn and Bruce Woolley Track Listings (Bootleg Album):
Total Time: 39:05
* contains score material composed by Hans Zimmer ** contains score material composed by Hans Zimmer and Trevor Horn *** song composed by Trevor Horn and Bruce Woolley All artwork and sound clips from Toys are Copyright © 1992, 1997, Geffen Records, Bootleg. The reviews and notes contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Filmtracks Publications. Audio clips can be heard using RealPlayer but cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/9/04, updated 9/29/11. Review Version 4.1 - PHP (Filmtracks Publications). Copyright © 2004-2013, Christian Clemmensen. All rights reserved. |
1992 Geffen