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| Silvestri |
The Wild: (Alan Silvestri) Bring in the lawyers!
Disney has had
The Wild in the pipeline for almost a decade, and
all the studio has to show for it now is the hard-learned lesson that if
you don't get your project out in a timely manner, another studio will
steal your idea and make $400 million worldwide off of your it first.
Such is the case with the evil twins,
The Wild and
Madagascar, with Dreamworks Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg
apparently taking the idea for
The Wild with him when he left
Disney and beat his former employer to the punch in getting the idea to
screen. Whether lawyers can have an impact on the situation remains to
be seen, though the similarities between the two films is so striking
that even a toddler could recognize
The Wild as a remake. In both
stories, a group of hip, semi-domesticated animals led by a lion escapes
from a New York City zoo and travels back to Africa in an improbable
voyage, where one of them is worshipped as a god, evil animal rulers put
them in peril, and important life lessons are learned. And yet, parents
keep paying to take their children to see these films, and the amazing
part of this equation is that
The Wild will probably earn a
decent take despite receiving even worse reviews from critics than
Madagascar and poor word of mouth from movie-goers tired of the
lack of originality in the animated genre. There are two aspects of
The Wild that simply beat
Madagascar in every regard, and
one is in the quality of the digital animation.
The other significantly superior aspect of
The
Wild is its original score by veteran orchestral blockbuster
composer Alan Silvestri. In recent years, Disney has kept a consistent
core of composers working on its projects. For its major features,
Silvestri and John Debney have alternated duties, while for the studio's
failed attempts to reacquire its glory in the musical genre, Alan Menken
has been given the keys back into the building. Meanwhile, Joel McNeely
continues to write overachieving music for the straight-to-video sequels
the studio belches out. These composers are all capable, having composed
outstanding award-quality music in the past, and that's one thing that
Disney usually tries to hold over Dreamworks in terms of their animation
divisions. Every film review of
The Wild contains the inevitable
comparisons between
The Wild and
Madagascar, and it's
tempting to do the same with the soundtracks. But to do so would likely
turn this review into an essay about the ills of Hans Zimmer's "score by
committee" structure versus a robust singular talent like Silvestri, and
it seems that by 2006, most score collectors have already taken their
sides in that debate. That said, the placement of songs in the two
projects, and their relation to the scores, is significantly different.
In
The Wild, an original title song by Monty Python favorites
Eric Idle and John Du Prez brackets a significantly lengthy score by
Silvestri. With some mild inspiration from
The Lion King, the
title song is also performed by Idle and Du Prez, serving as an
drum-beating African variant on their funny songs for
Spamalot,
and while basically a decent entry, it won't receive nominations or
significant attention outside of the picture.
For score fans, Silvestri's large-scale score will be
similar to John Debney's style for the genre, though with none of the
comedic parody intrusions. Whether the scene calls for chasing action or
slapstick comedy, Silvestri tackles the score with a sense of grandeur
(similar to how Elmer Bernstein treated many of the quirky comedies of
the early 1980's), with levels of gong and timpani-banging action that
rival the intensity of
The Mummy Returns. But while the depth of
the score mirrors that of Silvestri's trademark action scores, the
necessities of creating a children's score still weigh in the frequent
shifts in rhythm and thematic statements. For instance, an outstanding,
sweeping statement of theme three minutes into "To the Wild" is
bracketed by unpredictable, frenetic spurts of snare-ripping action. The
score leaps from huge moment to huge moment with ease during its entire
length, often marching at an accelerated pace while a theme is carried
by different soloists in the ensemble. With the consistency of the score
so strong from start to finish, there are really few standout moments,
and it's possible that the score could overwhelm you after 30 minutes
with its constant ruckus. But in a world when Hans Zimmer's fragmented
musical production of
Madagascar is considered passable by
studios, there's something refreshing about a vibrant orchestral
recording such as Silvestri's work for
The Wild. It might be a
tad formulaic, but you can't argue with the continued quality of a
proven style, and in this case, Silvestri pulls it off almost
effortlessly. The album for
The Wild starts with the typical
Buena Vista girl band belting out something completely foreign to film
score collectors' ears, though two other songs are light rock affairs
written specifically for the film, one of which a neat play on 1950's
boppers. Silvestri's score is then given 30+ minutes of uninterrupted
playtime, a generous gesture by Disney for the film score fans to
enjoy.
**** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Alan Silvestri reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.46
(in 41 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.33
(in 39,002 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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