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| Mancina |
Tarzan: (Phil Collins/Mark Mancina) An endearing,
all-around success story, Disney's 1999 summer animation blockbuster
Tarzan returned to a formula that had worked wonders for 1994's
The Lion King. The studio's adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs'
tale was graced with outstanding visuals, a well-rounded cast, and a
soundtrack that once again combined a member of the Media Ventures
scoring machine with a well-known rock musician. The pairing of Elton
John and Hans Zimmer for
The Lion King may be more famous than
that of Mark Mancina and former Genesis lead Phil Collins for
Tarzan, though when it came time for both duos to tackle another
animation film together, the latter two men arguably succeeded better in
the end. The voice of Collins was still a mainstay in the late 1990's,
with his distinctive tones mixed here in layers similar to those often
heard in his famous Genesis and solo efforts. Because Collins wrote his
own material for
Tarzan, his five songs also sound very familiar
to his career in terms of structure and instrumentation; only additional
arrangements made by composer Mark Mancina to tie the songs to the score
(and the film's overarching atmosphere) distinguish these efforts from
Collins' larger body of work. Mancina's career had already taken flight
by 1999, with several major blockbuster action scores under his belt.
While the tone of his music often reminded of Zimmer, his former
collaborator, he had begun to branch out significantly by the end of the
decade. His score for the dramatic 1998 character tragedy
Return to
Paradise has the most influence on his music for
Tarzan,
exhibiting some of the same exotic instrumentation and, interestingly,
an occasional reference to the former score's title theme. Mancina
stated clearly at the time that he was very happy with his collaboration
with Collins. Some of Collins' themes were integrated into the score
and, conversely, as already mentioned, Mancina handled instrumental
arrangements for Collins' main pieces.
The five songs by Collins all fit the film quite well,
though some have aged better on album than others. The primary ballad of
the film is "Two Worlds," a propulsive rock song that perhaps best
carries over from Collins' solo works. Its numerous appearances in
re-mixes and reprises on album (and in the film) serve to address the
title character's ongoing identity issues. Perhaps by accident, the
family song for Tarzan, "You'll Be in My Heart," stole the show. This
lovely piece is the bond between young Tarzan and his adoptive mother of
the wild (featuring a short contribution by Glenn Close), and its tender
movements struck Golden Globe and Oscar gold. This song's win of those
two awards came for it's only two nominations. The remaining songs
aren't anywhere near as memorable, with the upbeat "Son of Man"
adequately swinging through the trees with a growing Tarzan and the
confident "Strangers Like Me" reflecting late in the film on the
character's origins. The least interesting song remains "Trashin' the
Camp," a shifty jazz piece complete with rowdy sound effects and
ineffective vocal contributions by Rosie O'Donnell. The album for
Tarzan is a seemingly endless stream of variations on these
songs, usually adding to the film versions with the heavier percussion
and bass of pop remixes. While the song "You'll Be in My Heart" lost the
Grammy, the album as a whole did win one, proving that Disney succeeded
in their aim. The original film version of "Two Worlds" is condensed
into a shorted reprise that drops the significant Mancina arrangements,
which probably makes it a better listening experience for Collins fans.
While the pop version of "You'll Be in My Heart" turned out to be the
main attraction, Collins' far more delicately restrained recording of
the film version of that song remains superior. The recording of
"Trashin' the Camp" that Collins made with the popular boy band N'Sync
is obnoxious and unnecessary. No matter what your musical taste, the
album's songs will require some parsing to find what suits you
best.
The straight score by Mancina amounted to about 40
minutes in length when heard in the film, though he is credited with
co-writing some of the Collins songs due to his involvement in the
instrumental arrangements that connect them with the surrounding score.
The fluid movement between song and score in
Tarzan is among the
film's best attributes. Mancina does allow some of Collins' song
foundations to enter into the score. The cue "One Family" on the
commercial Disney album makes extensive use of the "You'll Be in My
Heart" melody and throws in a token reference to "Two Worlds" near its
end. Collins and Mancina combine their efforts fully for the "Two Worlds
Finale" cue that offers the standardized merging of the pop elements and
a choral crescendo (but with a great Tarzan call at the end). Mancina
does write his own title theme for his score, largely representing the
physical location in which Tarzan lives. This theme is heard extensively
in the first two to three minutes of "A Wondrous Place," with an
outstanding choral accompaniment to the theme at 1:10 into that cue (as
the scene surveys a waterfall and the surrounding jungle). The
medium-range jungle drums in this cue and others are joined by exotic
flutes of all registers, a direct carry-over from
Return to
Paradise. References to the theme from that score late in "One
Family" are an oddity in some ways, though the progression is simple
enough to forgive the overlap. The action cue "The Gorillas" is a return
to Mancina's more familiar Media Ventures associations. The sixteen
minutes of score material on the Disney album is a solid listening
experience, though the first and final cues, along with the "Two Worlds
Finale," are easily more enduring in quality. Mancina was limited to
that amount of material on the album because he had not yet mixed or
recorded significant parts of the score by the time the album needed to
be assembled. For die-hard fans, the composer eventually released the
full 40 minutes on a 26-track, score-only promotional album. Overall,
Tarzan offers a solid soundtrack and remains superior to Mancina
and Collins'
Brother Bear four years later.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Score: ****
- Songs: ****
- Commercial Album: ***
- Overall: ****
| Bias Check: |
For Mark Mancina reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31
(in 13 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.14
(in 9,511 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes extensive credits and lyrics for the songs. The CD is an enhanced
product, with multimedia files that were meant to perform on both Windows and Mac formats.
