Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,216
Written 9/25/03, Revised 2/27/09
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Buy it... if a series of smooth and pleasant carbon copies of Thomas Newman's
rhythms and Rachel Portman's melodies appeals to your romantic sensibilities.
Avoid it... if you are more in tune with the distinctly refreshing musical
styles heard in James Newton Howard's action and horror efforts of the same era.
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| Howard |
The Emperor's Club: (James Newton Howard) Studios still
apparently thought in 2002 that audiences hadn't quenched their thirst for the
"college teacher with underachieving students" formula of the previous few decades,
with Stand and Deliver, Mr. Holland's Opus, and, most notably,
Dead Poet's Society all building on a redundant idea. For The Emperor's
Club, actor Kevin Kline sheds the comedic light of his teaching role in In &
Out in favor of a Robin Williams-like performance of inspiration at the Ivy
League level. Director Michael Hoffman's mirroring of many of the same moral
dilemmas as had been seen in the aforementioned films before, as well as a
seemingly endless supply of misbehaving youth in the classroom, caused the film to
suffer the cold shoulder of many audiences. With A Beautiful Mind also
leaving an ill taste of Ivy League campuses at the time, The Emperor's Club,
despite Kline's talents, fell away from mainstream attention almost immediately.
Everything seemed too familiar about the project, including James Newton Howard's
predictable score. Howard's mainstream works were mostly oriented towards the
action or horror genres at the time, with The Emperor's Club squeezed in
between popular effective work for Signs and Treasure Planet. It
seems in retrospect that The Emperor's Club was the odd film out, with a
score composed perhaps with haste and more likely with too much attention paid to
the temp track that was likely used during the film's production. If you believe
that composers really can effectively produce music exactly like the temp track
(and it is by no means out of bounds to say that Hoffman and/or the producers had a
distinct sound in mind), then you will realize quickly upon listening to The
Emperor's Club that the filmmakers had The Cider House Rules and
Scent of a Woman in mind. So distinct are the similarities between Howard's
workmanlike score and the 1990's drama music of Thomas Newman, Rachel Portman, and,
to a lesser extent, Jerry Goldsmith, that anybody not already at peace with John
Debney's prolific career of such imitation projects will likely find Howard's
venture into the same territory to be startlingly alarming at worst and mildly
dismaying at best.
To an extent, detractors of
The Emperor's Club who exist
because of its lack of originality are justified in their complaint. Howard
obviously squashed his own stylistic sensibilities and fell into the popular trap
of the era: producing Newman and Portman music for an arthouse genre of film. From
the perspective of Newman's styles, you hear continuous and contemporary rhythms,
though employing traditional instruments and avoiding Newman's choices of unusual,
clunky instrumentation. But it is definitely like Newman in its sense of slightly
jaunty movement, with similar minimalistic tones attempting to create drama out of
the simplicity of repeating rhythmic devices. Thankfully, Howard does expand upon
these rhythms with the use of an acoustic guitar, replacing Newman's experimental
orchestration with a very clean and easy identity of his own. In these regards, a
person wouldn't be too far off by saying that
The Emperor's Club is the most
pleasant lightweight Thomas Newman score heard in the 2000's. The film's "Main
Title" is surprisingly uplifting in this formula, and the positive attitude heard
in this cue is maintained well by Howard throughout the work. For the serious
matters of the story, this pleasant tone is perhaps out of place, but still a
welcome surprise. In the latter half of the score, the more contemplative side of
the film is represented, and Howard switches to soft, woodwind-dominated shades of
Rachel Portman. It is the kind underscore that often connects Portman's lush themes
in her own works, but
The Emperor's Club has no such explosion of
string-layered theme (except, maybe, for a half-hearted outburst in the final cue).
The style of "Hundert Remembers" is rich with Portman sensibilities, especially in
the slow, lyrical passages for woodwinds. A hint of Jerry Goldsmith's more innocent
melodic work from the early 90's can be heard in some of the swaying thematic
references here as well. There is perhaps a moment in "25 Years Later" when
Howard begins to establish his own thematic style for the score, offering a
historically-inclined passage for cello, guitar, and brass that differs from the
rest of the score. But the entirety of the work is still derivative, making it a
mixed proposition for any film score collector. The album is very short, though it
presents exactly enough music to sustain
The Emperor's Club as a smooth,
enjoyable listening experience. That is, if you can turn off your brain's constant
connections to prior music while it is playing.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For James Newton Howard reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.4
(in 70 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.36
(in 86,530 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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