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A Kid in Aladdin's Palace: (David Michael Frank)
After the 1995 kiddie comedy
A Kid in King Arthur's Court made
about $13 million worldwide, Lions Gate decided to make a
straight-to-video sequel in 1998, moving the setting from Arthurian
times to Aladdin's Arabia. Both stories involve a teenager who works as
a pizza delivery boy and is magically transported to these mystical
settings of the past to save the world in unlikely ways. He takes his
20th Century gadgets back with him, which in the case of the sequel
includes a Swiss army knife, laptop computer, and camera. For
A Kid
in Aladdin's Palace, the boy assists Ali Baba and Aladdin in fending
off Aladdin's evil brother, Luxor, saving Arabia while entertaining
families with mirages of Burger King restaurants and incessant camel
farts. In the end, the boy manages to save ancient Baghdad from itself
by using his technological gizmos, funny wit, and flying carpets (the
latter two of which might have been an enormous help to George W. Bush's
invasion force, come to think of it), making
A Kid in Aladdin's
Palace a decent teenage fantasy flick. Composer J.A.C. Redford
(whose work accompanied
A Kid in King Arthur's Court) is replaced
by David Michael Frank for the sequel. Frank was receiving the most
press as any time in his career in 1997 and 1998, with both the scores
to the television and IMAX films
Narrow Escape and
Cosmic
Voyage receiving soundtrack album releases and hyped coverage. After
the Citadel Records release of
A Kid in Aladdin's Palace later in
1998, the composer's work would once again fade into obscurity, despite
the relative strength of these three works. While
Cosmic Voyage
is generally considered the most attractive of the scores on album,
A
Kid in Aladdin's Palace is an overachieving score with plenty of
listenable themes and strong references to popular desert and
fantasy-related scores. Once again, the quality of Frank's music exceeds
that of the film.
A learned film music listener will hear all sorts of
unintended references in
A Kid in Aladdin's Palace, perhaps a
result of temp track influences. A touch of Maurice Jarre's grand vista
statements in
Lawrence of Arabia is merged with the scope and
instrumentation of David Arnold's
Stargate, while chord
progressions from James Horner's
Star Trek scores highlight the
latter half of a major theme. A variant on the descending five-note
title theme from Andrew Lloyd Webber's
The Phantom of the Opera
is used for Luxor's activities, and some of the playful, percussion
laced cues will remind (as expected) of the Alan Menken score for
Aladdin. In the heroic moments, there's a touch of Bill Conti's
Master of the Universe score, but that's more of an overall
attitude reflection rather than a physical connection. The interesting
thing about Frank's score is that it blends all of these influences so
well into a thematically pleasant listening experience that he creates
something new; while your brain will constantly remind you of the
references, the overall package is so well integrated by Frank that you
can't deny the score a high grade for effectiveness. Never does
dissonance draw your attention away from the uncomplicated listenability
of his music, and while some people have claimed this lack of diversity
in emotional range to be a fault of Frank's writing, his scores
(including this one) are extremely easy to enjoy. The loyalty to basic
thematic statements leave you with several themes from the score in
mind, regardless of their relative lack of exotic flair or instrumental
experimentation. The weakness of the score is the size of its
performance, for here Frank wrote a score seemingly too large for the
orchestra to handle. The odd part of this occasionally sparse sound is
the fact that the ensemble is The City of Prague Philharmonic, a group
capable of far greater power. The recording quality here isn't as
resounding or vibrant as it usually sounds on its Silva Screen
compilation recordings, likely due to an extremely dry mix; this is
definitely a score to which you'll need to add some reverb and help it
reach its potential in listenability. Overall, a delightful and
undemanding score.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
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The insert includes a short note about the film and David Michael Frank.
