: (John Williams) When anybody in the
summer of 1986 thought about NASA and the American space shuttles, their
memories would become fixed on the sight of the Challenger exploding
tragically against a blue sky on a crisp morning earlier that year. And
yet, in an incredibly bad stroke of luck, the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration was just finishing up its collaboration with ABC
Motion Pictures to release
, a comedy thriller about a
bunch of bratty kids who are accidentally launched into space aboard a
real shuttle. The true-to-life summer camp teaches bright young kids
everything about flying a shuttle and claims that the best of the lot
could actually do it. The film spends over an hour trudging through
endlessly boring and predictable character conversations between the
kids. Kate Capshaw is the unfortunate leader of this group of twits, and
she gets propelled into space along with the group when a robot
conveniently launches them unexpectedly. Anybody who believes that NASA
would actually allow a group of these kids into a shuttle during a
booster rocket test might find some merit in this ridiculous movie. You
almost wish that the shuttle had blown up all over again and saved the
country from the potential of these kids spawning a future generation.
At any rate, being a children's movie, everything turns out fine in the
end. That is, except for audience reactions. The studio delayed the
production a few months because of the Challenger explosion, but that
didn't save the film from quietly slipping through theatres after
grossing only $10 million despite a hefty marketing campaign. As
laughable as it is, one might wonder why composer John Williams was so
enthusiastic about his involvement with the project. This would be his
lone film score in the years of 1985 and 1986, and while the assignment
may seem like an odd choice when considering the low quality of the
film, it makes sense if you look at the direction Williams was taking
with this career.
Part of Williams' limited film score production during
the mid-1980's was due to scheduling issues (including the endless
delays of
Hook), but since becoming involved with the Boston Pops
at the start of the decade and achieving almost God-like status on the
conductor's podium, he began writing themes for concerts and special
events that were all extensions of his
Star Wars-born orchestral
bombast. In the mid-1980's, Williams discovered this highly patriotic
style of concert writing that would eventually lead to specialty themes
such as "Liberty Fanfare," "Celebrate Discovery," "Jubilee 350," his
Olympics work, and even the "Mission" theme for NBC News on television.
His music for Steven Spielberg's popular "Amazing Stories" television
episode, "The Mission," was also saturated with this sound as well. In
his film scores, this uniquely American style of writing for Williams
would debut in
SpaceCamp and forever be best represented by that
score. Between the concert track and album's finale, Williams' patriotic
writing is at its very best. The grandeur and exuberance of these fully
orchestral statements of broad, hopeful themes are what define Williams'
career, and these two similarly-minded performances in
SpaceCamp
save the entire soundtrack from its otherwise average underscore.
Despite Williams' seeming best intentions, much of this score dwells in
non-descript regions of the composer's writing that takes a considerable
number of pages from his disaster scores of the early 1970's, as well as
some of the less interesting underscore from the original
Star
Wars film. The suspense presented in the latter half of the score
fails to state itself with effectiveness (though "White Sands" is very
similar in style to
Jurassic Park), with flat performances and
surprisingly poor sound quality hindering significant portions of the
whole. Once you are spoiled by the solid brass fanfares of the title
theme, the training cues do their best to mute their heroism with
restrained but still hopeful brass solos, and such material cannot
compete.
The identity of the kids really isn't addressed by
Williams in
SpaceCamp, even in the woodwind and string interludes
over flowing harp; the composer seems to have his sights set on the
expanse of space and little else. The only exception is the outrageously
dated "Training Montage" cue, in which Williams poorly infuses a modern
light rock rhythm with a drum machine. Some of the mechanized elements
in the film are handled with subtle motifs, including the robot and the
shuttle itself. A cute rising and falling string figure introduced in
"In Orbit" cleverly represents weightlessness. The remainder of his
score is pleasing despite the fact that listeners have heard every
element of the music rendered with better results in other works, on
screen or in concert. There are several outstanding moments in
SpaceCamp, but a flat recording and lack of stylish performance
aspects in its whole are the ultimate downfall for the entirety. A CD
album was not released until 1992, when a limited, 1,000 copy run was
produced in Japan to match original LP contents arranged by Williams in
his customary fashion. This BMG/RCA "club" album escalated rapidly in
value and sold in auction for over $200 at its prime. In 2010, Intrada
Records was able to license and reprint an identical presentation for a
3,000-copy run that sold out within a single day. Unfortunately, the
label's efforts to improve the sound quality are only moderately
successful and a few notable cues from the score remain missing from the
jumbled selection of cues by necessity of the licensing arrangement.
Intrada returned to
SpaceCamp in 2014 and made the score one of
its regular commercial offerings, so its status as a storied rarity will
be put to rest permanently. Note that the sound quality issues with the
score remain on this 2014 re-issue; the product literally is a carbon
copy of the 2010 predecessor. Overall, while the score would be a very
strong find at normal used CD prices, or even at new CD bargain prices,
its outdated sound and lack of distinct ideas reduce its attractiveness.
It's an admirable effort from Williams, with two incredible cues, but
you'll hear everything in
SpaceCamp to a much finer degree in
other places.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For John Williams reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.68
(in 91 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.54
(in 363,495 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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