 |
| Horner |
Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius: (James Horner) The
plotline of the cinematic telling of
Bobby Jones: Stroke of
Genius could seem like 120 minutes of torture if you're not
enthusiastic about golf and its history. Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. remains
the one and only person to have ever won the title of Grand Slam
Champion by winning the British Amateur, the British Open, the U.S.
Open, and the U.S. Amateur, all in 1930. Having done so at the age of
28, Jones is the subject of biographical treatment in this film, which
depicts his life up to and including that golfing record. It's a
no-thrills detailing of Jones' sickly childhood, his "miracle" year of
performance on the golf courses of Scotland and America, and his
ultimate decision to retire early to spend time with his family. The
film was pounded by critics for being a boring examination of an event
that few people really care about, with poor cast performances (led by
Jim Caviezel fresh from his suffering portrayal of Jesus in
The
Passion of the Christ) and sappy, unoriginal photography of golf
courses. If you go back through the rather stark history of golfing
films (
Tin Cup,
Caddyshack,
The Legend of Bagger
Vance, etc), there really is a limit to the originality with which
you can make an interesting dramatic film about the sport and, more
specifically, one golfer. This problem extends to the original scores
for these films, though Rachel Portman managed to strike one very
popular and magical exception with
The Legend of Bagger Vance in
2000. Since the meat of
Bobby Jones is based in Scotland, the
producers of the film sought the services of James Horner in order to
reinvent his own wildly popular 1995 score for
Braveheart in a
more personalized fashion. After producing four scores all for release
in the last two months of 2003, Horner continued his fast pace of
writing with both his replacement score for
Troy and a his
heartfelt work for
Bobby Jones, both of which released on album
on the same day in May, 2004. Fortunately for the composer,
Bobby
Jones is a score that Horner could have written in his sleep, and,
in most of its parts, it sounds like he just may have been asleep while
writing it. The film didn't necessary demand much of Horner; its
emotional depth could have been greater had the filmmaking been of
better quality, but as it stands, a very stereotypically soft ethnic and
string score from Horner suffices at every turn without presenting any
substantively new ideas.
Despite a press release and a few fanatical Horner
enthusiasts' assertions that
Bobby Jones is a "magical" score,
it's clearly evident that less magic went into this work than into
Field of Dreams, which remains an important sports and
family-related score in Horner's career despite its overrated status.
The largely string tone for
Bobby Jones has lyricism and harmony
pleasant enough to lull the listener into a gentle snooze, with a
repetitive theme that experiences several similar variations throughout
the score. Horner produced so many of these string themes since the
early 1990's that it becomes difficult to pinpoint which one of them
that
Bobby Jones most resembles, though a noble rising structure
first heard as a supplemental idea in "Baby Stokes" is copied in its
entirety from as far back as
Glory. The heavy layering of these
string swells in "Destined for Greatness" represents the sole memorable
highlight of the score. A solo horn announces the vistas of the golf
courses in solemn tributes to the game in a few cues. A distant solo
drum beat can often be heard in latter stages, perhaps hushing the
orchestra in the same funny manner that golf announcers always whisper
into the microphone. More important are half a dozen outbursts of
Scottish flavor with Uilleann pipes, guitars, and ethnic woodwinds that
pick up the rhythm and serve to represent the Scottish golfing
locations. This familiar personality for Horner smacks the listener
early in the score, and if any part of
Bobby Jones could produce
eye-rolling sarcasm or allergic reactions, it will be this highly
derivative material. Whether laced with Scottish spirit or not, the
thematic progressions in
Bobby Jones are all so mundane,
pleasant, and lengthy in their slow performances that you don't leave
this score with a tune in your head. Rather, a soft and cozy emotional
impression is left, without a single convincingly darker moment existing
to vary the mood. It's difficult to recommend this score to anyone who
already has a healthy dose of Horner music in his or her collection,
because it will be so redundant that its value is greatly diminished.
Despite its own set of flaws, the concurrently released
Troy was
at least a far more interesting listening experience. The album for
Bobby Jones presents an overly-generous 60+ minutes of a score
that could have easily sufficed with a 45-minute release. It confirmed
that the composer was sinking further and further into his own abyss of
self-regurgitation, and unless you have a special place in your heart
for
Bobby Jones as a film, then skip this score in favor of one
of Horner's many other, often more interesting variants on the same
style.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,346 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra
information about the score or film.
