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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 famed
"Jumanji" 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. Such was the fate for Robin Williams' character, stuck
in the fantasy world for decades before returning to the real world and
attempting to save a dysfunctional family from suffering the same fate.
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
critics failing 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. The wholesome personal redemption and character bonding element
became lost in the premise. This despite composer James Horner's best
efforts to add sentimentality to a soundtrack that, by the nature of the
film, was destined to be wild. For Horner, who had scored
Honey, I
Shrunk the Kids and all of the other films for Johnston at the time,
Jumanji came at the end of a remarkable 1994-1995 season that
revealed some of 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 during that year, how could Horner screw
this one up? Well, he did, and it's difficult to pinpoint exactly why
unless you chalk up the loss to the breakneck pacing of the film's story
and the composer's attempt to match that momentum with haphazard,
cartoonish variations on his own styles. Little in the score for
Jumanji convinces in its sincerity, too, the music resembling the
most generic of Horner's mannerisms when attempting to infuse
warmth.
The pace of
Jumanji'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 lasting, 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. Two sadly underdeveloped
themes are introduced in
Jumanji, one for the innocence of
Williams' Parrish character caught in the game and one strictly for the
game that ultra-ironically resembles Gabriel Yared's rejected identity
for the Trojans in
Troy note for note. The latter is littered
throughout the score after its rumbling introduction in the first minute
of "Prologue and Main Title," supplying suspense there and early in
"Alan Finds the Game." It begins shifting to more heroic tones by the
middle of "Store Mayhem," occupying increasing intensity from the
orchestra in "Stampede!," late militaristically in "Monsoon," and in the
middle of "Jumanji." The lack of any prominent placement of this theme
in "End Titles" is a travesty, Horner content instead to explode with
the monkey-related comedy material at the cue's outset. The "End Titles"
track rather extends the Parrish family theme out of the preceding
"Peter, Judy and Parents" in an attempt to emphasize the heartiness of
the tale. This theme is a prototypical Horner identity of softness,
reminiscent of
The Spitfire Grill and
An American Tail and
conveyed most frequently by a South American kena flute that Horner was
fond of at the time. These fleeting passages, from "Main Titles" to "A
New World" and a handful of other moments before the finale, are the
easy highlights of the score even though their progressions and demeanor
are somewhat generic to Horner' career. Aside from these two primary
themes, Horner's other recurring ideas aren't particularly memorable, a
tumbling motif for the dice of the game a possible exception. An
inspired motif for "The Hunter" is a standout idea, but Horner strays
into directionless action material for the rest of the score.
Wacky percussion and klaxon horns offer silliness at
high doses at times, and cues of intentional orchestral chaos, such as
"Monkey Mayhem," are more irritating than their cartoonish intent is
worth. (Horner never seemed to draw great playful, chaotic humor out of
an ensemble the way Jerry Goldsmith could.) Meanwhile, the fully
orchestral moments of dread rely far too heavily on stock rumblings of
deep percussion. Several decent moments exist in the climactic
"Jumanji," including some of Horner's better inclusion of the Japanese
shakuhachi flute for wailing accents over pulsating brass as in
Willow and
The Mask of Zorro, but even this cue builds to
a dissonant climax worthy of
Vibes. After the family theme in the
end titles, Horner again throws a confusing addition to the mix,
adapting some of his Native American chanting from
Thunderheart
in the final moments. Ultimately,
Jumanji is a disappointing mess
with little cohesive action and only brief dramatic appeal. Along with
Balto the same year, this film marked the end of Horner's era of
common association with large-scale children's pictures. He somehow lost
the 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. The original 1995 album of 51 minutes was more than
sufficient, though Intrada Records supplied a well-produced, 2-CD set in
2022 with the fuller film version of the work and a remastering of both
that and Horner's disparate album arrangement sometimes featuring
separate takes. For most casual enthusiasts of the composer, the
differences between the album and film arrangements won't be
significantly noticeable, though fans of the film itself will be
well-served by Intrada's inclusion of secondary cues of less flamboyant
tone. In either presentation, 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. Despite toying with several strong ideas in the score, the
composer completely fails to do what his memorable scores of 1995 all
accomplished: tie those ideas together into one great, narratively
accessible package.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For James Horner reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.15
(in 108 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.23
(in 203,549 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert of the 1995 Sony/Epic album includes no extra information about the
score or film. That of the 2022 Intrada product contains details about both.
