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Review of King Richard (Kris Bowers)

FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:

Buy it... if you appreciated Kris Bowers' competently sufficient but never inspirational or exemplary drama atmosphere and sports competition conventions in context.

Avoid it... if you expect a score defined by emotional piano contemplation and insistent string ostinatos to exude any sense of depth or momentum, this work surprisingly inert despite going through the motions.

FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:

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.  ***

TRACK LISTINGS:

Total Time: 44:20

• 1. Family Dinner (2:00) • 2. The Plan (3:12) • 3. Unexpected (2:12) • 4. Hitting (0:41) • 5. Practice (2:18) • 6. First Match (1:44) • 7. Carbon Mesa (2:58) • 8. That's Our Job (2:16) • 9. Fired (1:18) • 10. So You Wanna Play? (1:00)

• 11. Court Day (1:43) • 12. Stafford (3:52) • 13. Both Girls (2:22) • 14. Venus vs. Vicario (2:30) • 15. First Set (3:18) • 16. Vicario (2:02) • 17. Match (2:05) • 18. Family (3:09) • 19. Be Alive* (3:40)

NOTES & QUOTES:

There exists no official packaging for this album.

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The reviews and other textual content contained on the filmtracks.com site may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Christian Clemmensen at Filmtracks Publications. All artwork and sound clips from King Richard are Copyright © 2021, WaterTower Music and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 11/27/21 (and not updated significantly since).