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| Horner |
Jumanji: (James Horner) In an attempt to ride the
wave of super-popular animal special effects that was caused initially
by
Jurassic Park, director Joe Johnston brought the board game
described in Chris Van Allsburg's children's book to life. The premise
of the
Jumanji story involves a supernatural game that brings its
jungle world to life and puts the actual players in jeopardy of being
maimed, or perhaps worse yet, caught in the spell of the game forever.
Johnston had brought a child's twist of special effects perspective to
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids several years earlier, and unfortunately
for
Jumanji, the capabilities of the technology had begun to
overwhelm storylines by 1995. The massive failure of
Jumanji in
the theatres during the Christmas season of that year was due in part to
the fact that critics failed to see the purpose in establishing the
entire premise of a film simply for the sake of special effects, and
also due partly to the fact that the film deserved far more than a PG
rating since it proved capable at terrifying children in the audience
rather than entertaining them. For composer James Horner, who had scored
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids for Johnston,
Jumanji came at the
end of a 1994-1995 season that would reveal the composer's best
collective work in his career, and you couldn't blame Horner fanatics
for having extremely high hopes for
Jumanji. Given the extent to
which the film's special effects were advertised in the news, how could
Horner screw this one up? Well, he did, and it's difficult to pinpoint
exactly why. The pace of the film's script is one that favors one scene
of mayhem after another (as each player makes a move), so Horner is left
jumping through several hoops without the score or film being able to
provide any cohesive sense of completion. Then again, the ability to
raise hell in individual scenes of chaos and hysteria was accomplished
by Horner with strong results in
We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story.
In
Jumanji, however, there is no direction to the music
whatsoever, leaving the result as yet another collection of general
techniques from the composer that will tend to remind listeners of his
prior successes without taking any of those ideas in a newly coordinated
direction. A lack of dominant thematic presence is another flaw inherent
in this form of presentation, a circumstance exacerbated by generic
melodic constructs to begin with.
Along with
Balto the same year,
Jumanji
marked the end of Horner's era of common association with large-scale
children's pictures. A problem is evident in
Jumanji, however, in
the form of Horner's lost elements of charm and magic that were nearly
always present in his superior children's works. Some of it still
existed in
Balto, but by the time
Jumanji rolled around,
the enticing rhythms, the sensitivity of themes, and everything 'cute'
that had defined Horner's involvement in the genre had been replaced by
a mutation of those elements with the grown-up action sensibilities of
scores like
Apollo 13 and
Clear and Present Danger. There
is more in common in the action writing of
Jumanji with
Courage Under Fire than there is with the countless children's
scores that Horner penned in the previous decade. Two sadly
underdeveloped themes are introduced in
Jumanji, one for the
innocence of the Alan Parrish character caught in the game (Robin
Williams), and one strictly for the action pieces that ultra-ironically
resembles Gabriel Yared's identity for the Trojans in
Troy note
for note. An inspired motif for "The Hunter" is a standout idea, but
Horner strays into directionless action material for the mass of the
rest of the score. Cues of intentional orchestral chaos, such as "Monkey
Mayhem," are more irritating than their cartoonish intent is worth
(Horner has never seemed to draw great playful, chaotic humor out of an
ensemble the way Jerry Goldsmith could), and the fully orchestral
moments of dread rely far too heavily on stock rumblings of deep
percussion. Several decent moments exist in the climactic "Jumanji" cue,
including some of Horner's better inclusion of the shakuhachi flute for
wailing accents over pulsating brass (as in
The Mask of Zorro
later), but even this cue builds to a dissonant climax worthy of
Vibes. After a sensitive flute statement of the Parrish theme in
the end titles (reminiscent of
The Spitfire Grill and
An
American Tail), Horner again throws a confusing addition to the mix,
adapting some of his Native American chanting from
Thunderheart
in the final moments. It's easy to get frustrated by the score for
Jumanji, because there was so much potential for great action
material to rival the excitement of
Willow and other Horner
classics, and despite toying with several strong ideas in the score, the
composer completely fails to do what his great scores of 1995 all did:
tie those ideas together into one great, accessible package.
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| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.16
(in 103 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.26
(in 192,918 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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