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•	1991 Capitol Album

•	2011 Universal Album

•	1991 Capitol Album

This film was not the first instance during the composer's final ten years in which his music was rejected from a major American picture. He was far more distraught with his removal from Something Wicked This Way Comes in 1983, however, accepting the loss of Regarding Henry with greater ease. These two rejected works (actually, about half of each) were eventually released together by Universal France on one CD in 2011, and the 33-minute Regarding Henry portion features sound quality far better than that of the older work. In both cases, Delerue was supplanted by much younger composers on the verge of finding their strides in American cinema, and these replacement scores were both above average in quality. Whereas James Horner finished the scoring duties for the 1983 film, Regarding Henry became one of many character stories for composer Hans Zimmer, who was in the midst of a period in his career when light dramas and romantic comedies were the norm. He was a dependable source of affable, contemporary music at a low cost, having proven his techniques with the mainstream upon receiving an early Oscar nomination for that sound. In terms of instrumentation and spirit, many of Zimmer's scores for these assignments from 1989 to 1993 utilize extremely similar ideas that became the composer's easily identifiable trademarks. The success of any one of these scores individually usually depended upon the composer's ability to insert some kind of unique personality into each score. For Regarding Henry, he begins with the same one-man ensemble of keyboards and samples, continuing to emulate organic instruments with remarkably satisfying results. But on top of these conservatively safe choices (and thematic progressions that unquestionably share traits with other optimistic Zimmer scores of the era), the composer layers a small collection of important acoustic instruments and unconventional vocals into the mix. These special touches allow an enthusiast of Zimmer's older, contemporary style of writing to appreciate this music while digesting some satisfyingly distinguishing characteristics by which to identify it. Whereas Delerue had tackled the story of rebirth with an overwhelming sense of optimistic (and, in a few places, heroic) progress, Zimmer's approach was far more ordinary to filmmaker expectations at the time. The result of his efforts for Regarding Henry is, as was typical for Zimmer in this kind of role on other projects, a completely innocuous and pleasant listening experience with a marginally adequate dose of style far lighter on its feet than Delerue's beautiful but broadly antiquated sound.

The rhythmic swing of Zimmer's score is slightly jazzy for the urban atmosphere and employs the soft keyboarding that once defined pop song accompaniment. The composer's themes are somewhat generic amongst his concurrent output, though a slightly melancholy sense does inhabit their melodramatic structures. The way these themes are fleshed out in the score's highlights, however, provides nothing less than another exuberant representation of rebirth. Offered in succession in "Walkin' Talkin' Man," these ideas illuminate most of the instrumental soloists as well. The most memorable is the distinctive voice of Bobby "Don't Worry, Be Happy" McFerrin, whose puffing and sighing performances were seemingly sampled by Zimmer and dubbed in several different variations of pitch to actually replace the need for metallic percussion to set a rhythm. These intriguing vocalizations, which only really lengthen out into melodic accompaniment in that opening track, are so interesting in their tone in some places that they may be distracting from Zimmer's otherwise standard keyboarding. Conventional light percussion pushes a few cues along in the middle passages. An acoustic double bass lends much of the jazzy appeal to the score, sometimes meandering about beneath the keyboarding with freedom. Trumpet and violin soloists accentuate the almost otherworldly nature of some of the ethereal keyboarded, orchestral samples. The trumpet's muted tone offers a noir-like feeling of mystery while the violin has been processed in such a way as to sound like an erhu, an enchanting contributor to several cues. At times, the processing of certain elements makes the soloists eerily vague, as in the ghostly operatic voice in the middle sections of "Henry vs. Henry" and "Gotta Get Me Some of That." Zimmer does ground these sounds with his usual sampled woodwinds, from the crowd-pleasing faux clarinet from Driving Miss Daisy to the quasi-exotic flutes from Green Card and beyond. These performances are assembled into nearly constantly harmonic statements of the score's themes from start to end, yielding a very consistent listening experience on album. Nothing in Zimmer's work for Regarding Henry is earth-shattering, but you can add it to the wealth of easy listening of the least intrusive nature that the composer was accustomed to writing back then. The rare, score-only album for his music does not contain Sting and The Police's song "Walking on the Moon" from the picture. That may a good thing, because you could put this relatively short score on repeat and doze off to a better place for a few hours. The same could be said of Delerue's score, though expect the Frenchman's take on the concept to carry infinitely more weight while achieving the same result.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download

• Music as Written by Hans Zimmer for the Film:  ****
• Music as Written by Georges Delerue for the Film:  ****
• Overall:  ****

Bias Check:

For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.93 (in 101 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.94 (in 279,310 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.