Buy it... if you typically collect robust orchestral action scores for the animated genre, and are friendly to the genre's styles from Alan Silvestri and John Debney.

Avoid it... if formulaic animation scores, no matter how strong in performance, all sound the same to you.

Silvestri

The Wild: (Alan Silvestri) Bring in the lawyers! Disney has had The Wild in the pipeline for almost a decade, and all the studio has to show for it now is the hard-learned lesson that if you don't get your project out in a timely manner, another studio will steal your idea and make $400 million worldwide off of your it first. Such is the case with the evil twins, The Wild and Madagascar, with Dreamworks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg apparently taking the idea for The Wild with him when he left Disney and beat his former employer to the punch in getting the idea to screen. Whether lawyers can have an impact on the situation remains to be seen, though the similarities between the two films is so striking that even a toddler could recognize The Wild as a remake. In both stories, a group of hip, semi-domesticated animals led by a lion escapes from a New York City zoo and travels back to Africa in an improbable voyage, where one of them is worshipped as a god, evil animal rulers put them in peril, and important life lessons are learned. And yet, parents keep paying to take their children to see these films, and the amazing part of this equation is that The Wild will probably earn a decent take despite receiving even worse reviews from critics than Madagascar and poor word of mouth from movie-goers tired of the lack of originality in the animated genre. There are two aspects of The Wild that simply beat Madagascar in every regard, and one is in the quality of the digital animation.

The other significantly superior aspect of The Wild is its original score by veteran orchestral blockbuster composer Alan Silvestri. In recent years, Disney has kept a consistent core of composers working on its projects. For its major features, Silvestri and John Debney have alternated duties, while for the studio's failed attempts to reacquire its glory in the musical genre, Alan Menken has been given the keys back into the building. Meanwhile, Joel McNeely continues to write overachieving music for the straight-to-video sequels the studio belches out. These composers are all capable, having composed outstanding award-quality music in the past, and that's one thing that Disney usually tries to hold over Dreamworks in terms of their animation divisions. Every film review of The Wild contains the inevitable comparisons between The Wild and Madagascar, and it's tempting to do the same with the soundtracks. But to do so would likely turn this review into an essay about the ills of Hans Zimmer's "score by committee" structure versus a robust singular talent like Silvestri, and it seems that by 2006, most score collectors have already taken their sides in that debate. That said, the placement of songs in the two projects, and their relation to the scores, is significantly different. In The Wild, an original title song by Monty Python favorites Eric Idle and John Du Prez brackets a significantly lengthy score by Silvestri. With some mild inspiration from The Lion King, the title song is also performed by Idle and Du Prez, serving as an drum-beating African variant on their funny songs for Spamalot, and while basically a decent entry, it won't receive nominations or significant attention outside of the picture.

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For score fans, Silvestri's large-scale score will be similar to John Debney's style for the genre, though with none of the comedic parody intrusions. Whether the scene calls for chasing action or slapstick comedy, Silvestri tackles the score with a sense of grandeur (similar to how Elmer Bernstein treated many of the quirky comedies of the early 1980's), with levels of gong and timpani-banging action that rival the intensity of The Mummy Returns. But while the depth of the score mirrors that of Silvestri's trademark action scores, the necessities of creating a children's score still weigh in the frequent shifts in rhythm and thematic statements. For instance, an outstanding, sweeping statement of theme three minutes into "To the Wild" is bracketed by unpredictable, frenetic spurts of snare-ripping action. The score leaps from huge moment to huge moment with ease during its entire length, often marching at an accelerated pace while a theme is carried by different soloists in the ensemble. With the consistency of the score so strong from start to finish, there are really few standout moments, and it's possible that the score could overwhelm you after 30 minutes with its constant ruckus. But in a world when Hans Zimmer's fragmented musical production of Madagascar is considered passable by studios, there's something refreshing about a vibrant orchestral recording such as Silvestri's work for The Wild. It might be a tad formulaic, but you can't argue with the continued quality of a proven style, and in this case, Silvestri pulls it off almost effortlessly. The album for The Wild starts with the typical Buena Vista girl band belting out something completely foreign to film score collectors' ears, though two other songs are light rock affairs written specifically for the film, one of which a neat play on 1950's boppers. Silvestri's score is then given 30+ minutes of uninterrupted playtime, a generous gesture by Disney for the film score fans to enjoy. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

Bias Check:

For Alan Silvestri reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.34 (in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.27 (in 30,725 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.