The resulting soundtrack for
Christopher Robin
contains new songs from Sherman, reprises of his classic tunes, two new
themes for the orchestral score by Brion, and one new main theme by
Zanelli, not to mention a slew of ghostwriters providing bits and pieces
here and there. Even Danny Elfman's usual orchestrating team became
involved. Casual audiences probably won't care about the disjointed
elements of the overall soundtrack, and Zanelli's team does a pretty
good job weaving the new ideas together, but this haphazard methodology
does have a nagging negative impact on the score. It's the kind of work
that surely suffices and even excels at times, but there's an absence of
convincing emotional connection in this music that comes from its
conservatively rendered stance and sometimes disparate thematic
interests. The ambient tone is largely fine, with the orchestra
utilizing all the solo piano, woodwinds, and light chimes you'd expect
for the occasion. The lack of convincing depth to the ensemble
performances, even in the final action and resolution sequences, is a
bit disappointing. While the concept has never blown the roof off the
theatre with its musical resonance, this live action variation merited
some of the ambitious presence of comedy and drama closer to Rachel
Portman's vintage output in the genre, such as
The Adventures of
Pinocchio. There's a lot of melodic intent to unpack in
Christopher Robin, but the slow and understated nature of the
score's personality could lose the interest of listeners anyway. The
discussion of new themes for the score has to pause for a moment to
consider the interpolation of Sherman's classic themes into the mix.
Sadly, these adaptations are provided more wholesale than hoped; for a
film about rediscovery, the composers fail to intelligently integrate
Sherman's music directly into their own themes as they become more
focused during the length of the narrative. You hear the famous "Winnie
the Pooh" theme, along with "Up, Down and Touch the Ground" and "The
Wonderful Thing About Tiggers," dropped into the film without the kind
of thoughtful interpolation necessary in this context. The album release
completely ignores two of the three, with only the brief phrasing of
"The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers" heard in "Nothing Ever Bad Comes
from Bouncing." Zanelli, Brion, and associates essentially reinvent
themes for the major concepts where all-new ideas weren't really
necessary or even desired, at least not by the end of the film. The
presence of the new Sherman material, including his cameo during the
credits sequence, negates any argument of necessary musical
separation.
The best cue attributions available for the
Christopher Robin score seem to indicate that Zanelli and his
crew wrote what became the film's main theme while Brion's contribution
was reduced to the work's two major secondary themes. Interestingly,
it's the new theme by Zanelli for Pooh and his relationship with Robin
that both dominates the score and needlessly shuns the prior musical
identity for that connection. Heard immediately in "Storybook" and
continuing through the majority of cues in the score, this melancholy
piano-led theme eventually achieves redemption by its full, symphonic
performances in "I Do Nothing Every Day" after being run though a number
of stylistic variants in between. It's an affable series of three-note
phrases that retains its inherent sadness even in its most upbeat
performances. Meanwhile, Brion's theme of mischief bursts forth in
"Train Station" and "Heffalump Battle," along with frenzied extensions
of its jazzy, Heffalump-worthy humor in late action cues. (These are the
portions that owe the most to Portman humor.) Brion's piano theme of
outright sadness is heard in full during "Not Doing Nothing Anymore" and
likewise returns in the latter half of the score. Interestingly, neither
of the character themes, Zanelli's nor Brion's, helms the score's
arguably most pivotal moment. At the height of "A Father of Very Little
Brain," Zanelli opts instead to adapt fragments of the score's prior
identities into a new momentous idea of victory. It's at moments like
this and "Returning to the Hundred Acre Wood" when obvious, smart
interpolations of the Sherman themes, whether vintage or new, would have
been appreciated. Surprisingly, two of the most engaging cues are
back-to-back Zanelli entries early on; in "I Would Have Liked It to Go
On for a While Longer" and "Chapters," the music handles the
transitional scenes in the story with better pep and engagement. The
latter features the score's only notable choral element, aiding acoustic
guitar and percussion in denoting the passage of time before yielding to
a singularly positive pop-like moment of optimism in the final minute of
the cue that remains, almost oddly, the highlight of the whole work.
When you step back from this soundtrack, you get the feeling that it
could have been coordinated so much more effectively had its production
process gone smoothly. The result effectively serves its purpose, but
there are melodic opportunities missed and the Sherman involvement seems
token. The recording is also rather mundane, with none of the
improvement to the ambient depth of the concept that Zanelli had guided
for
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. Expect the
nearly hour-long album for
Christopher Robin to drag
significantly during its middle passages.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
