Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,095
Written 4/13/08
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Buy it... if you'd like to pass fifty minutes with pleasant,
carefree, and likeable children's adventure music that makes no demands
on you whatsoever.
Avoid it... if you expect any single aspect of the score, from the
themes to the action cues, to stand out and distinguish itself in
memorable fashion.
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| Doyle |
Nim's Island: (Patrick Doyle) An adventure film
aimed at girls under twelve years old, Nim's Island is about a
young girl and her father who live alone on a South Pacific island. The
father is a marine biologist, known to the real world as Gerard Butler,
and the girl is imaginative in her activities while enjoying a nice
house with all the modern amenities. When the father goes missing, the
girl relies on her e-mail exchanges with a female author in San
Francisco for help. This author, known to the real world as Jodie
Foster, is the creator of a fictional adventurer in the form of Indiana
Jones that the girl's father sometimes becomes in her imagination. While
the author does come to the island to help, the overcoming of her own
agoraphobia is the subject of her development. The girl, meanwhile,
fights off unwelcome intruders to the island in Home Alone
fashion. The plot devices in Nim's Island are predictable, even
down to the obligatory volcano and storm sequences, and reaction to the
film has been somewhat muted. Co-directors Jennifer Flackett and Mark
Levin relied on veteran composer Patrick Doyle to provide a score that
skirts a fantasy genre in which Doyle has been exploring himself over
the previous few years. Fans of the composer have often wished him more
mainstream adventure scores, and he has consistently delivered with
music that varies from "functional, but interesting" to quite engaging
in a bombastic sense. For Nim's Island, Doyle carries over some
of his developing sensibilities from those more serious ventures, but
given the airy innocence of the story, he strays closer to Carl Stalling
unpredictability as necessary. Doyle described the process as a
"fantastic journey," inspired by the vast scope of the little girl's
imagination, some of which pulls elements from as early in Doyle's
career as Shipwrecked. For collectors familiar with the genre,
perhaps the most accurate comparisons in style will exist between the
music of Nim's Island and the numerous similar James Horner
projects of the early 1990's. Like those Horner scores, Doyle's Nim's
Island offers individual highlights but lacks a distinct anchor for
its thematic and character material. It's a thrill of the moment kind of
score with a tender heart.
The biggest difference between
Nim's Island and
the aforementioned James Horner children's writing, however, is Doyle's
inability to firmly establish and develop a primary set of themes. While
Horner's children's scores could often become predictably obnoxious, he
at least provided a distinct theme or two for each entry. Doyle offers
plenty of pleasant harmony and swaying thematic ideas in
Nim's
Island, but never does he state one with authority and provide it
with convincing or memorable treatment until the very end of the film.
The orchestral ensemble is always whimsical and delightfully fluffy, a
trait true to similar outings in Doyle's career, and that group is aided
by acoustic guitar and synthetic choir in parts. The sound will never
overwhelm you; there are no thunderous percussive romps like those in
The Last Legion or other recent Doyle fantasy works. The thematic
material that does shine through often dances close to the territory of
Cliff Eidelman's light character dramas of the 1990's; a lovely theme
slightly introduced in the opening "Nim's Island" and expanded upon
significantly by woodwinds in "It's Empty" and full ensemble in "Nim
Sees Jack" is especially comparable to Eidelman. Other themes introduced
in "Nim's Island," "Become the Hero," and "The Great Outdoors" are
sometimes singular, with Doyle following a thematic line that never
seems to occur again in the score. The free-floating and hopelessly
optimistic charm of some of these cues may simply be masking their more
subtle nuances, however, and perhaps more important to the score's
success is its ability to create a wondrous atmosphere without getting
too specific. The conclusive "Nim Sees Jack" has all the explosively
delightful and cheery attitude of the end to
Much Ado About
Nothing. The action cues in the middle portion of the score, from
"Lizard Attack" to "Helicopter Storm," are a bit anonymous and
underpowered. The slight reggae elements heard in the percussion of the
latter half of "Nim's Island" isn't convincing compared to the infectious
sounds of IMAX composer Alan Williams, which this emulates to a degree.
The slight choral hints in cues like "The Great Outdoors" and "Alex
Swims Away" don't provide too much infusion of fantasy into the mix.
Overall,
Nim's Island is an adequate score at every turn, though
rarely more. Despite the thematic strength in the final two cues, the
score is easy likable but ultimately forgettable.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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Bias Check:
For Patrick Doyle reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.84
(in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.45
(in 26,392 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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