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| Rabin |
National Treasure: (Trevor Rabin) Serving as little
more than a poorly rendered preview of Ron Howard's 2005 adaptation of
"The Da Vinci Code,"
National Treasure is a ridiculous piece of
eye candy that requires you to suspend nearly every practically minded
thought in your head if you want to buy into the its premise. A
contemporary American investigator with outstanding intuition (whose
family seems fond of naming their children after the founding fathers of
their country) does what acclaimed scientists for centuries have tried
and failed in doing: discover the path to the Holy Grail of fabled
treasures. Along the way, he has to stumble upon hidden shipwrecks,
steal America's Declaration of Independence, avoid a nasty-as-usual Sean
Bean, and happen upon vast cave systems that somehow seemed to elude
geologists despite all of the era's technology. The far-fetched nature
of the film, not to mention the extensive rip-off implications and
skeptical reviews from critics, didn't stop
National Treasure
from barreling to the top of the box office charts for a few weeks in
the tepid Christmas season of films in 2004 and spawning a sequel
several years later. Being a Jerry Bruckheimer production, this
brainless mush was simply the next in a long and successful string of
films that the famed producer used to diminish the collective
intelligence of the world with an obvious lack of logic, and if you
crown
Armageddon as the king of these endeavors, then it should
come as no surprise that former Yes member and former Media Ventures
associate Trevor Rabin was the composer of choice for
National
Treasure. While many similar artists from the halls (or periphery)
of Hans Zimmer's school of musical sensibilities in the 1990's had since
graduated to bigger and better things (namely John Powell and Harry
Gregson-Williams, among others), Rabin seemed content stirring the same
old pot of Media Venture samples and simplistic rhythms and melodies for
films that called for that dumbed-down, candy-packaged approach. In
fact, he became something of a relic by the end of the 2010's, the only
composer really continuing to emulate that original 1990's sound in his
collaboration with Disney for youth-oriented action flicks. Still,
despite this lack of stylistic maturation, Rabin was perfect for the
National Treasure franchise. In a way, his methodology is exactly
what audiences (and even some film music collectors) still expect to
hear when they go to the theatres prepared to suspend their belief in
logic, and regardless of whether or not you can enjoy this music, it's
difficult to say that the fit between film and score isn't appropriately
cozy.
Realistically, you can't expect
National
Treasure to have received music any more intelligent than the usual
muck that Rabin provided. The surprising aspect of Rabin's effort is
that it actually ranks rather highly compared to most of his recycled
sounds back then, competing at times with even his better regurgitations
of this general style in his late 2000's assignments. That doesn't mean
that there exists an ounce of individual creativity in instrumentation
or any other unique element in
National Treasure. In fact, its
recycled electronic and orchestral ramblings are extremely tired and
familiar. But at least they are assembled into a somewhat more palatable
form, enhancing the role of the keyboard for a number of cyclical
figures that do attempt to inject a sense of elegance into the score. It
has the
Armageddon effect going for it, one in which you move
from pretty and simplistic orchestral statements of melody in one cue to
metal-slapping charges of electric guitar-laden wildness in the next.
Rabin never seems as though he wants to completely drop either sound in
any context, so in the first half of
National Treasure, you hear
his underdeveloped anthems performed with the pseudo-sincerity that
comes with a product that doesn't quite sound either entirely orchestral
or entirely synthetic. An extremely large number of orchestral players
is credited for this recording, but it seems as though these performers
rotated in and out for sessions that probably amounted to a smaller
overall group. Hence, a closing crescendo of majesty in "Treasure" that
closes out the score with a tone that sounds more synthetic than real.
The lightly rhythmic, tonal cues are pleasant, if not simply rehashes of
music burned into the collective memory, and similar ghosts of scores
past are raised for the latter half of the score, in which Rabin wields
the electric guitars like a plastic sword in the hands of an 8-year-old
child. The main anthem is first heard with the customary snare backing
in "Ben" and eventually flourishes with fake choir during the
faux-inspirational sendoff in "Treasure." Rabin almost busts out of his
mould with flashy moves into the arena of Thomas Newman's keyboarding in
"Library of Congress" and at the start of "The Chase." The "Declaration
of Independence" cue, though, is perhaps symbolic of the (rather short)
album's weakness, its beauty sandwiched in between daunting, rampaging
electronic guitars. If only Rabin could stick with one mode or the other
for an entire blockbuster such as this, then perhaps listeners could
forgive its terribly recycled constructs and enjoy the performances from
the electronic or orchestral elements alone. Unfortunately, he had not
yet found that balance by
National Treasure, though with the half
dozen mundane but peasant orchestral tracks, Rabin pulls off a decently
adequate score.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Trevor Rabin reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.5
(in 12 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 2.63
(in 12,991 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information
about the score or film.
