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Review of The Cat in the Hat (David Newman/Marc Shaiman)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... only if you consistently appreciate the fast-paced, slapstick
nature of David Newman's usual style of children's score writing, or if you seek
the musical numbers from the film.
Avoid it... if the highly predictable orchestral writing for this genre becomes redundant quickly for you, for this score has no truly unique instrumentation or thematic development.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Cat in the Hat: (David Newman/Marc Shaiman) After the
success of Universal's film adaptation of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole
Christmas in 2000, the studio added Seuss-related attractions to its theme
parks and promised a series of live action films that would bring more of Theodor
Seuss Geisel's children's fantasy books to life. The second such adaptation was
The Cat in the Hat, the 1957 story about a mischievous feline in a hat
visiting two bored kids home alone on a rainy day. The book remains one of the top
selling hardcover children's books of all time, and yet, anyone familiar with the
story of The Cat in the Hat could easily wonder how the short story could
occupy an entire film. Leave it up to studios to flesh out these stories with
questionable filler material, however, and much liberty has been taken in expanding
the scope and characters of the story. With Mike Myers acting in the same effective
make-up that the Grinch required in the previous film, The Cat in the Hat
has a sort of Tim Burton splash of coloration and wacky set design. Unfortunately,
the promise of a lengthy franchise of Dr. Seuss films with Myers was broken after
this 2003 entry for a variety of factors. Gone from the series was James Horner,
and for the music for this rainy day adventure, children's film veteran David
Newman wrote a score opposite a few song contributions by score and song-writer
Marc Shaiman. Newman could easily share the distinction of genre leader with John
Debney as a member of the prolific tandem that scored the mass majority of major
studio children's films of this era. In the 2000's, Newman had been involved in
Ice Age and Scooby-Doo, but unlike Debney, whose music often finds CD
shelves in either commercial or promotional format, Newman's breakneck speed of
output makes his scores a rare find in any format. But in similar fashion to
Debney's styles for the genre, these Newman scores do begin to really sound alike
after a while. All of these scores are orchestrally rooted and instrumentally
creative, paying tribute to Carl Stalling and Raymond Scott's music of Warner
Brothers cartoons from yesteryear, and yet they don't often distinguish themselves
from project to project.
Newman's rousing, slapstick orchestral score for The Cat in the Hat is no exception to this trend of generic children's music. In this case, Newman works with a studio orchestra and without the assistance of any really unique instruments (including the lack of a choir). From the lengthy opening cue to the finale, the score jumps at the overwhelming pace of the cat's personality, immediately moving through a juggling of orchestral motifs to match the actions on screen. A somewhat half-hearted theme is established for the two kids at the start of the film, but the pace of the non-stop topic changes in the film's story doesn't allow for that (or any) theme to be developed beyond the level of the most basic motif. The cat's insistence on having fun is conveyed orchestrally by the yielding to barroom band instruments. Occasionally, a loungey rhythm will slow down the pace of a cue, but ten seconds later, the brass is ripping at the pace of a snare, and ten seconds later, the woodwinds are performing a cute little motif to the sound of music box chimes. And five minutes later, the same rotation of ideas is recycled. A significant disappointment is the lack of truly unique instrumentation to represent the cat's many ideas and methods of having fun. A distant choo choo train whistle can be heard hooting in "Rescuing Nevens," and yet, with the wild machinery cleaning the house in the story, one would expect to hear more of this technique. Newman does, to his credit, exhaust the percussion section in several cues. Shaiman, a humorist on the side, wrote a song (and its reprise of sorts) for the cat's arrival, and due to its big band style and unique personality compared to the same old orchestral slapstick, this song, "Fun, Fun, Fun," is a highlight of the album. Even here, parents might be horrified by lyrics that talk about castration and asses; it's nowhere near as vulgar as the lyrics in Shaiman's South Park songs, but it's evident that the cat in the film is even naughtier than the one in the book. The Smash Mouth interpretation of the Beatles classic "Getting Better" is an unfortunate deviation from the attitude of the rest of the album. Overall, Shaiman's material is affable (though short in length), but the predictable score from Newman is simply more of the tired and adequate, but repetitive slapstick material for cartoonish situations heard in countless similar pictures before. **
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 49:02
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert unfolds into an ugly poster, but includes no extra information
about the score or film.
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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from The Cat in the Hat are Copyright © 2003, Decca/Universal and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 11/8/03 and last updated 3/13/09. |
