The television show's composer, Gregor Narholz,
provided original music for the 2004 film, and genre veteran John Debney
stepped in for a somewhat robust but inconsequential pirate-themed score
for the 2004 sequel. For
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run,
director Tim Hill, who had collaborated through the years with
Christopher Lennertz on similar projects, turned to the Remote Control
Productions empire to land a combination of Hans Zimmer and Steve
Mazzaro, who had tackled 2017's
The Boss Baby together. As
expected, there has been shared no clear documentation about the balance
of duties between Zimmer and Mazzaro on this project, an ongoing,
significant problem with attribution caused by RCP's broader
methodology. The task of these men was to supply a rather minimal number
of scenes with original music, as most of the film utilizes song
placements as SpongeBob and his vaguely perversely-shaped starfish
friend Patrick go on a half-dream, half-real journey in search of a
kidnapped pet snail. A song-only album accompanied the film but managed
to annoy concept loyalists by, not surprisingly, failing to include many
of the songs actually heard in the movie. Zimmer and Mazzaro's
contribution clocks in at under 40 minutes, and the filmmakers appear to
have used some cues twice to fill in gaps. The pandemic caused the score
to be a somewhat artificial product, only one player per orchestral
instrument recorded separately (due to social isolation) and dubbed
endlessly with the others. Zimmer is credited with the synthetic
arrangements that seem led by mundane choral accompaniment. The style of
the score is all over the place, ranging from the base Hawaiian luau
element using slide guitars to faint shadows of Western tones a la Ennio
Morricone, Latin flair for a passage featuring the Devil, accordion and
harpsichord with a European tilt at times, and even what sounds like a
sitar in one cue and kazoos in another. The pirate motif from the prior
score is completely gone. Sometimes, there's a pleasant presence for
orchestral romance of a faux nature, as in the "Bikini Bottom" cue that
highlights the score and opens the film. By "After Them!" near the end,
the sparse action mode is exposed. Operatic female vocals are overblown
humor in the background of a few places, including the score's most
notable unique motif for the villain, Poseidon. This idea prances
forward in "The Royal Poseidon" and resolves with redemption in "You've
Got One Now."
The light luau tones of
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge
on the Run more generally represent the concept's origins, and
Zimmer and Mazzaro earn kudos for sticking with that feel from the show.
However, their applications are haphazard and do little to structurally
guide the narrative of the whole; the melodic structures of "Bikini
Bottom," for instance, don't really make much of an impact later in the
score. The position of the song placements in the film, which encompass
the finale (the show's atrocious theme song is applied at the dedication
to Hillenburg) and end credits, don't really allow the score much time
to wrap any theme for its own purposes, "You've Got One Now" returning
to the general luau mode at the end but not resolving the melody from
the film's start. There are some potentially coincidental but hopefully
intentional in-jokes featured in the music, including a rendition of
Lalo Schifrin's plot theme from "Mission: Impossible" at 0:44 into "The
Royal Poseidon" and an odd interlude for John Williams' "Amazing
Stories" theme in the middle of "You've Got One Now." Among the
flamboyant diversions in the work is the frenetic and cartoony moment of
panic in "Gary's Missing" and (maybe racist?) Latin personality and
spoken lyrics of "El Diablo." The most ambitious Morricone nod comes at
the start of "Sandy's Arrival." Overall,
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge
on the Run is, like its predecessor, easy listening but
insubstantial. The pandemic recording process worked, but the ambience
of the music is indeed shallow. This score is much shorter than
Debney's, however, and does not offer the same cohesion in thematic
development. That deficiency is worsened by the album presentation
offering of only the score. First released by Paramount Music digitally
and then on a limited CD run by La-La Land Records, the presentation
runs less than 30 minutes (welcome the memories of vintage Varèse
Sarabande products) and is not in chronological order after the first
few tracks. The climax and resolution cues are provided in the middle of
the album, and several cues from the second-third of the film are
missing. Why the finale, "You've Got One Now," is placed in the middle
of the product is a mystery perhaps best explained by the mental damage
that the cartoon caused to the album's arranger as a child. The score is
a step behind both
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and
Boss Baby, and enthusiasts of the concept, when not in counseling
sessions, will be best served mingling the brief score amongst the
film's songs.
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