| CLOSE WINDOW |
|
FILMTRACKS.COM
PRINTER-FRIENDLY VIEW 
Review of I Am Number Four (Trevor Rabin)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if your appreciation of Trevor Rabin's predictably
familiar fantasy mode for Disney's teenager-aimed films never ceases to
send you back to a comfortably nostalgic revisit of the composer's
1990's sound.
Avoid it... if you require the flair and passion that Rabin's writing often exudes in this subset of dated but adequate music, for I Am Number Four continues to function but is not as engaging or cohesive as the composer's similar works of the late 2000's.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
I Am Number Four: (Trevor Rabin) When DreamWorks
and J.J. Abrams engaged in a bidding war over the cinematic rights to
Jobie Hughes and James Frey's teen fantasy book of the same name, I
Am Number Four raised expectations for a fruitful franchise of
movies aimed at the Twilight demographic. Instead of vampires and
werewolves in battle at a parochial high school, however, I Am Number
Four uses alien youths with super powers (and generic ones at that;
why can't these writers come up with superpowers significantly different
from what we saw as far back as Terence Stamp's ever-lovable General
Zod?). Nine such alien boys and girls are sent from the planet Lorien to
hide on Earth and evade the destroyers of that world, though the evil
Mogadorians discover their whereabouts and start assassinating these
teenagers on Earth. After the first three are dispatched, the fourth
becomes the next target, and he and the sixth, a kick-ass young woman,
unite to fight and ultimately eliminate the band of assassins sent to
find them. Alone, that storyline is fine enough, but in the mandatory
style of any novel aimed at teenagers these days, there has to be a
pretty Earthling love interest and her athletic boyfriend complicating
matters. Thus, I Am Number Four alternates between silly action
sequences exhibiting the aliens' amusing powers and sappy love triangle
nonsense the serves no purpose but to appeal to the female half of the
under 18 crowd. Despite involvement from the intriguing pairing of
Steven Spielberg and Michael Bay, the finished product from D. J. Caruso
was disastrously met by critics, most of whom repeatedly pummeled the
concept for its stupidity. That didn't stop audiences from sucking it in
during the slow early months of 2011, eventually turning a $50 million
budget into over $140 million in grosses, perhaps not enough to launch
the desired franchise but far from a failure either.
Since I Am Number Four fell into the realm of Disney distributed fantasy movies for youths, it's no surprise that former Yes rocker Trevor Rabin wrote its score. The composer's career has been dominated by such topics from Disney and its affiliates over the previous few years, highlighted by Race to Witch Mountain, G-Force, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, and perhaps the best recognized of the lot, the National Treasure movies. The one thing that absolutely anybody can say about Rabin's methodology for these films is that it's consistent, a very reliable throwback to 1990's Media Ventures mannerisms and Rabin's own stagnant style that undoubtedly continues to appeal to filmmakers like Jerry Bruckheimer and Michael Bay. For film score collectors, hearing these Rabin adventure scores of the late 2000's is akin to an eerie throwback to the 1990's. Whereas the style of Hans Zimmer's other Media Ventures/Remote Control associates has evolved through the years, Rabin continues to unashamedly write in that same original mould. In fact, it almost seems as though he's decided not to follow the stand procedure of purchasing updated samples for his programming uses in the last ten years, because some of the exact same ones continue to persist. In many ways, for a listener nostalgic for film music of the 1990's, there's something refreshing about Rabin's refusal to change his basic foundations even fifteen years after that sound debuted. Race to Witch Mountain in particular was a score that paraded the best of Rabin's tried and tested formula in 2009, and while I Am Number Four dutifully takes the same musical route, the 2011 score is less cohesively developed. There are constants that are indeed maintained in I Am Number Four, starting with Rabin's usual blend of a well-balanced orchestra and his various electronic arrays. Choral effects range from generic background synthetics to light majesty in the foreground that is most likely sampled as well but at least resurrects the appeal of Deep Blue Sea. A combination of light keyboarding and electric guitar, sometimes with the help of a mid-range woodwind solo, sooths with the usual theme of character development (introduced in "Who We Are"). A bolder power anthem-like identity for the butt-whooping action is less pronounced in I Am Number Four but does exist relatively hidden within both "Hit Me With Your Lumen" and "Commander Mog Explodes." Standard Rabin chord progressions of extremely easy and rather simplistic orchestrations are also familiar players. Slapped percussive rhythms with wailing guitar, static full ensemble thematic flair, and generic tonal grandeur make themselves heard in the final third. Rabin does try to infuse some John Powell-style of rampant string movement for action sequences, most notably in "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Forest Fight." A little Mark Mancina comes into play during the heavily looped sequences with pitch-defying sound effects. Most of these techniques come together in "VI to the Rescue," something of a summary cue of 1990's blockbuster music. Aside from the fact that nothing in the score for I Am Number Four really attempts to stretch into new territory, there is also some lingering dissatisfaction with the handling of the themes. As mentioned before, Rabin's main anthem for the heroic element only reveals itself in a small handful of performances late in the score, with no interesting foreshadowing. Also, his idea for the main character and his love interest is pretty (especially in "Getting to Know Sarah," a definite easy listening highlight of the score) but not very intelligent. It is based upon a series of five-note phrases that betrays the possibility of writing a theme of four notes for the lead character and one of six for his alien counterpart. Perhaps such detail is too much to ask from a Rabin score, for despite the inherent simplicity and familiarity in everything you encounter in I Am Number Four, the music surprisingly continues to function just as adequately as it did more than a decade prior. Don't expect anything on the relatively well presented 44-minute album to add substance to an existing Rabin collaboration, but predictability sometimes does have virtues of comfort, and here those benefits barely scratch out a third star for the score's rating. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 44:12
NOTES & QUOTES:
The insert includes a list of performers but no extra information
about the score or film.
Copyright ©
2011-2024, Filmtracks Publications. All rights reserved.
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 I Am Number Four are Copyright © 2011, Varèse Sarabande and cannot be redistributed without the label's expressed written consent. Page created 7/7/11 (and not updated significantly since). |
