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| Bowers |
King Richard: (Kris Bowers) With tennis stars Venus
and Serena Williams joining him, actor Will Smith sought to produce an
autobiographical tale of the athletes' father, Richard Williams, who
also served as their coach and a driving force behind their ascent in
the 1990s. The plot of
King Richard follows the period when the
father toiled with moving the family across America and allowing the
girls to turn professional in their early teen years, concentrating
especially on Venus' early triumphs. The relatively low budget film
spent 80% of its primary budget on Smith himself, who stars in the
titular role. Despite overwhelmingly positive reviews, the film fared
poorly at the box office, debuting simultaneously on a streaming service
and compelling Smith to share some of his payout with other actors on
the project. While the original Beyonce Knowles song, "Be Alive," gained
the most attention on the film's soundtrack,
King Richard also
caps a breakout year for young jazz musician-turned-composer Kris
Bowers, whose score otherwise wraps the movie's narrative. After
breaking into film, television, and video game music in the late 2010's,
the last of which noted for his involvement with the Madden NFL games,
Bowers emerged in 2021 with
The United States vs. Billie Holiday
and
Space Jam: A New Legacy. He is among the few ascending
African-American composers in Hollywood in this era, his collaborations
with African-American filmmakers guiding many of his high-profile
assignments. As he approached
King Richard, Bowers looked to the
piano as mainly a percussive tool to represent the sport of Tennis and,
for the rhythmic formations of the competition sequences, he consulted
the movement of string ostinatos by the likes of Philip Glass and Steve
Reich. For the tone, a prepared piano was key to finding the right sound
of the sport, placing a variety of putty, nails, ping-pong balls, and
clothespins inside the piano to offer more than just felt to generate
the sounds. (Honestly, listeners will have no idea that any of these
items were used on the strings of a piano; the resulting tone is not
strikingly different from the bevy of synthetic manipulations that are
omnipresent in film scoring during this time.)
Instrumentally, aside from the prepared piano in
King Richard, Bowers also employed drums for enhanced excitement
during scenes on the court. Electronic embellishments contribute as
well. But it's a moderate string ensemble that dominates the score,
carrying the depth beyond the piano for the emotional character scenes
and defining the competition scenes with its dry, assertive ostinatos.
Bowers devised a theme for Richard to guide the entire score, its
progressions ultimately morphing into several variants for the other
characters. The first five notes of the theme not only inform themes for
the daughters, but they become a cyclical rhythm for later court scenes
as well. The evolution of this idea is extremely subtle, however, so
don't expect to notice how the main theme impacts the score unless you
carefully observe the work. This detriment is largely due to Bower's
inability to clearly state Richard's theme up front, "Family Dinner" and
the nearly identical "Fired" both opening with the deliberately
keyboarded theme over a wash of synth strings and cello. When tepid, as
in these cues, the theme sounds almost like a wayward series of two-note
progressions without purpose. The court and competition-related material
extending out of these phrases is previewed in "The Plan" and will come
to define the score; a solo snare rhythm with a few sparse lines above
from cello, keyboard, and tapping build to the work's first fuller
string rhythm in the last minute of the cue. The only truly challenging
listening experience in the score is "Unexpected," its dissonant strings
and clunky synthetic bass distracting from the remainder of the
listening experience. Conversely the score's only true sense of coolness
comes in "Hitting" and "Practice," the former's attitude-laden, forceful
rhythm lasting twenty seconds only and the latter's accelerated string
rhythms joined by light snare. A similar tact is taken in "Carbon Mesa,"
with a little more instrumental diversity added to the rhythms. The
score shifts back to atmospheric contemplation in "That's Our Job," with
light piano over wishy-washy strings tentatively exploring ascending
phrases that will later dominate. Bowers reprises this phrasing faintly
in "So You Wanna Play?," but the application remains sadly inert. The
progressions of Richard's theme finally come to life with a new
personality at 0:51 into "Court Day," underlying string rhythms more
aggressive by that point.
The enhanced presence for the score's main theme in its
second half extends to 1:04 into "Stafford," where similar rhythms but
with more suspense yield a striking end. A more romantic tone from
clearer piano arises in "Both Girls," a newly cyclical melody on piano
and cello possibly proposing itself as a theme for Venus. The main theme
returns at 0:27 into "Venus vs. Vicario" but is buried in surrounding
string ostinatos, the cue's action turning to hazy fantasy atmosphere in
the last minute. Prickly rhythms open "First Set," an alteration to the
main theme continuing at 1:17 without enough of a connection to its
original form to serve the scene well. That said, the cue slowly
increases its intensity and depth to an engaging final minute that is
among the best moments in the score. The string ostinatos of "Vicario"
are a little more elegant yet urgent, but late electronic thumps are
distracting. The main theme reprises its original, tentative, two-note
pairs on piano over strings at the outset of "Match," and while the
strings take the theme towards a more resolute finish, it is one without
any sense of catharsis. The conclusive cue, "Family," is a mixed bag,
the first minute of the cue ambiguous, with no convincing inspirational
tone. The game play rhythm returns at 1:04, though, the theme over the
top expanding upon the "Both Girls" Venus melody. Bowers closes out the
score with somewhat stereotypical low piano chords of intended gravity.
On the whole, there is a narrative attempting to develop throughout the
music for
King Richard, but the enunciation and evolution of the
main theme is never pronounced enough to really satisfy. That leaves the
work as one defined by its competition ostinatos and associated
instrumentation, and these sequences don't often sustain momentum from
cue to cue. The best moments of attitude in the work are often very
short, and the extremely dry ambience of the recording can make the
string presence slightly abrasive at times. For listeners not interested
in ostinato-defined phrasing,
King Richard could reside somewhere
between an innocuously easy and disappointingly boring presentation on
album, where its 40 minutes of running time are about all that the score
can support. The Beyonce song, "Be Alive," is truly terrible, its awful
melody and jerky rendering sharing no relation to the score. In the end,
Bowers achieves his purpose for
King Richard and shows
significant promise, but the work doesn't convince emotionally and stops
well short of standing alongside the more inspirational sports scores of
history.
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