: (Joel McNeely) Based in part upon a
real-life 1917 dog sled race between Winnipeg, Manitoba and Saint Paul,
Minnesota, the 1994 feel-good Disney movie
tells of a
young man fulfilling his father's legacy and saving his family
financially by competing in the race. When his father is killed in a
mushing accident, the man decides to raise money for his family's South
Dakota farm and earn his own passage in the sport and to college. His
plight is covered by news outlets in search of an underdog story, and
the film's solid supporting ensemble included appearances by Kevin
Spacey, David Ogden Stiers, and Brian Cox. The wholesome Disney
entertainment was praised to same extent as any of these interchangeable
films at the time, and a reasonable $21 million in box office grosses
greeted
just after the start of the year. The movie's
technical elements were vital to its credibility, and joining the
Minnesota and Montana landscapes in bringing the feel of the great
outdoors to cinemas was Joel McNeely's fully symphonic original score.
The composer had earned his first mainstream recognition after his Emmy
win for "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" in 1993, yielding two
career-defining results that almost immediately guided his output over
the rest of the decade. First, McNeely became known as "the next John
Williams" as a result of his ability to emulate the maestro's writing
style on command (a descriptor that was later transferred on to Michael
Giacchino), and he was hired several times during the 1990's to provide
what essentially amounts to knock-off Williams music. Secondly, he also
established a strong working relationship with Disney, which hired
McNeely to write music for a handful of their live action movies like
before transitioning him with great success to their
straight-to-video animation division, where he cranked out numerous
solid but wholly anonymous scores for decades. Indicative of both his
capability to channel Williams and supply Disney with hearty orchestral
music is
, a highly entertaining and tonally
ultra-accessible score for outdoors adventure.
By 1994, McNeely already had
Squanto: A Warrior's
Tale under his belt and was about to embark upon
Gold Diggers:
The Secret of Bear Mountain the following year, and these three
scores can easily be interchangeable in many of their action and drama
sequences. Each has its own specialty, however, and whereas
Squanto emphasizes the ethnic element and
Gold Diggers
concentrates upon the smoothly dramatic lyrical side,
Iron Will,
technically the composer's first major feature assignment, is an
exercise in fanfares and excitement extracted from the same general
mould. The handling of the orchestra is competent in all portions, and
McNeely did employ separately recorded percussion enhancements to
bolster this already deep score, but expect a somewhat dry archival
sound quality to restrain its appeal in some parts. You have to admire a
young, admittedly terrified composer's ability to generate rousing
orchestral dynamism for a project like
Iron Will, but this score,
more than its siblings, is also a temp track nightmare. It's nearly
impossible for a learned film music collector to appreciate
Iron
Will casually without becoming distracted by the many references to
specific scores by John Williams and Bruce Broughton, along with brass
counterpoint techniques from the career of Jerry Goldsmith and dramatic
progressions from James Horner's lyrical side. While the Williams
reflections have always been somewhat expected in McNeely's early years,
the Broughton connection is more interesting, in part because such
Disney pictures had been a Broughton specialty during that era. While
you encounter
Homeward Bound in vague doses throughout
Iron
Will, the similarities between "The Race Begins" and the concert
suite of Broughton's famous
Silverado theme are shamelessly
unmistakable. The Williams references are literally too numerous to
point to individually, for so many of McNeely's themes are inspired by
the Indiana Jones scores,
Born on the Fourth of July,
Hook,
Home Alone, and
Far and Away that there is
little point in attributing each one in insulting fashion.
One thing that has to be said about McNeely's ability
to work through a temp track, however, is his generally impressive
skirting of the ideas with enough skill to suffice for the occasion. The
quality of the constructs and execution in
Iron Will is
exemplary, proving McNeely a master arranger at the very least. In both
Iron Will and
Squanto, there is only one point in each
respective score during which the temp track bleeds through so obviously
as to be show-stoppingly obnoxious. In the previous score, it was
Hook, but in
Iron Will, there is a passage at about 1:20
into "Devil's Slide" during which McNeely inexplicably reprises
Williams' entire Nazi theme from the desert chase sequence of
Raiders
of the Lost Ark, producing an understandable chuckle in the dog-sled
context. Outside of these issues, McNeely's score is rich with thematic
development, well enunciated throughout its length despite each idea's
derivative nature. Of particular interest is the melodramatic character
theme expressed with convincing emotional appeal in "Gus Rescues Will"
("Gus Saves Will"). A common four-note phrase (Trekkies will love or
hate it) is applied to several themes for consistency, and this
progression is applied as a dog whistle in the context of the film.
McNeely works this and related ideas into his themes for the main
character, his family roots, the film as a whole, and the adventure of
the race. His ability to master the pacing of his final cues is
especially commendable, the tempi gradually slowing until the rousing
dose of Williams' Olympics material in "Crossing the Line" ("Finish
Line"). Overall,
Iron Will is an admirably effective score
despite its clear temp track issues. There are hints of McNeely's own
nascent style to be heard in a few places, particularly in the
application of woodwinds that would become a staple of the bubbly
Tinker Bell scores. The original 1994 album from Varèse
Sarabande ran 31 minutes and offered the score's brightest highlights. A
short-lived 2019 expansion product by Intrada added another 38 minutes
of score and the film's source material (arranged by McNeely) that will
please enthusiasts of the movie. The longer presentation does
occasionally drag in its suspense or conversational cues, but the work
remains attractive enough to recommend on the Intrada album for
listeners without the 1994 original. Be prepared for undemanding,
wholesome music for the outdoors.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Joel McNeely reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.38
(in 16 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.14
(in 8,447 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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