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Review of The Emperor's Club (James Newton Howard)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
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.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
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. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 29:19
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers, but no extra information about
the score or film.
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