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Review of The Willoughbys (Mark Mothersbaugh)
FILMTRACKS RECOMMENDS:
Buy it... if you've appreciated Mark Mothersbaugh's flashes of
orchestral prowess in previous work, the finale of this score containing
some of his most impressive recordings.
Avoid it... if Mothersbaugh's wild tendencies annoy you to no end, the big band swings, faux classical pomposity, vintage electronica, slide guitars and ukulele, and yodeling all together a recipe for madness.
FILMTRACKS EDITORIAL REVIEW:
The Willoughbys: (Mark Mothersbaugh) Those who work
in the foster care industry have much to protest about the insanity of
Netflix's 2020 animated children's film, The Willoughbys.
Parental abuse, orphan rebellion, and foster care nightmares are all
topics plundered for this wildly stupid but generally entertaining flick
in which the four children of a wealthy family revolt to attempt the
vacation deaths of their uncaring parents. In the animation style of
Hotel Transylvania and The Addams Family, these kids spend
the film sticking together in their plight for freedom from the parents,
a supposedly evil nanny, and a variety of external forces that drive
them apart. With a talented voice cast, The Willoughbys earned
significant critical and audience praise despite its disturbing
narrative undercurrents. Reuniting with director Kris Pearn after
collaborating on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is musician
extraordinaire Mark Mothersbaugh, whose long career transition from Devo
new wave darling wearing funny hats into an orchestral film score
composer wearing funny hats continues. While taking much longer, his
career arc has followed the path of Danny Elfman's to a great degree if
not for the fact that Mothersbaugh never really broke through into the
non-children's-genre mainstream outside of a notable foray into the
Marvel Cinematic Universe with Thor: Ragnarok in 2017.
Mothersbaugh's extensive credits in the animated movie realm are
highlighted by his repeated work in the Cloudy With a Chance of
Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania, and The Lego Movie
franchises, much of it flashing moments of greatness despite the scores
typically remaining too fragmented to appreciate apart from their films.
In many of these assignments, as well as Thor: Ragnarok, the
composer shows significant prowess with a full symphonic ensemble,
reinforcing notions that he could write magnificent dramatic film music
if ever called to do so. The Willoughbys contains more of the
same but with even wilder swings between the impressive and insufferable
passages, and, to its credit, it is perhaps the funniest Mothersbaugh
score to date.
Since one of the children in the story is a singer (her screen voice, Alessia Cara, performed the "I Choose" song for the film and includes some melodic continuity with Mothersbaugh's score), there is a distinctly musical tone to the movie. Expect vocal interludes with lyrics and plenty of genre-defying infusions of tones from all sorts of types of music. It's intelligent but challenging all the same. On the definite upside, Mothersbaugh maintains a consistent thematic base for The Willoughbys, with a main theme for the children, an adventure variant, and a stomping, pretentious motif for the parents by the end. The primary theme is a sensitive Elfman emulation, offering redemptive feelings to more tonally optimistic cues like "I Want Her to Stay" and "The New Family." The adventure theme really shines in late cues like "Chase/Rainbow Zeppelin" and "Follow the Yarn," where it takes on some similarities to Alan Silvestri's Night at the Museum scores. These orchestral expressions of the themes will be the highlights of the score for most film music collectors, but surviving the outrageous spins of the rest of the work will take patience. Mothersbaugh takes the main theme and roars through big band swing and 1970's rock, sometimes mixed together, shifting to softer vintage jazz tones. In "The Willoughbys," the two "The Willoughby Boogie" cues, "We Are Orphans," and "Parents Are Still Alive," this material adeptly transfers the melody to a mostly unrecognizable form. Early in the work, a harpsichord and loungey keyboarding form a bastardized classical effect out of the swing and rock cues. By "Melanoff's Factory," Mothersbaugh strays to 1980's electronica in what would serve as perfect accompaniment for a Terry Crews robot dance. (Crews voices Melanoff.) The harpsichord persists into the straighter orchestral material as a prickly reminder of the parents, adding faux importance to "Brochure Montage," "Nanny's Arrival," and "Man of the House," the last cue nauseatingly medieval. The source-like moments of pure humor from Mothersbaugh include the demented Bing Crosby imitation followed by tropical luau tones in "The Warmest Glove/Parents Depart" and the angelic female singing in "The Perfect Family" that merges David Arnold choral majesty with Randy Newman flightiness to form a real estate sales pitch that culminates with the singers saying, "Buy this house!" at the end of the cue. As for the more strictly orchestral passages in the score for The Willoughbys, the vague haunted house environment early in the score doesn't really have enough weight to carry the mood. Moments like "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night" and "Here Beastie Beastie" are understated, and a promising opening to "Melanoff's Magnificent Mustache" yields the work's single, putrid stab at horror later in that cue. But the action scenes late in the film form upwards of twenty minutes of the most impressive symphonic material of Mothersbaugh's career, featuring some outstanding mixing to bring a sense of larger-than-life dynamism to the recording. Starting at "We Unite as Willoughbys" and "Willoughby Beast," the score offers a depth of resonance unusual for Mothersbaugh, only the return to crazed electronica in the truly awful "Escape" distracting from an otherwise really robust set of action cues. The duo of "Chase/Rainbow Zeppelin" and "Follow the Yarn" is particularly impressive, for former building upon a foreshadowed presence of yodeling in "Brochure Montage" in a way that takes the singing and blends it perfectly with the ensemble as a tonal accent. The main theme is enunciated with lofty exhilaration in these cues, accelerated in tempo nicely to maximize the redemptive spirit. The application of various percussive techniques with drums and metals in "Following the Yarn" is another highlight. In the end, continuity issues relating to the genre-hopping tendencies and extensive instrumental variance are the defining characteristic of the music for The Willoughbys, a bright, extroverted personality connecting them all but not allowing for any semblance of consistency. The film's narrative may be well-served to an extent by this haphazard shift over the course of the score, but the total loss of the big band swing element by the end is unnecessary. What replaces it is really quite good, but there must have been a better way to connect all the wildly disparate styles of this score into a more cohesive development. To his credit, the composer presents phrasing in "The New Family" that adeptly foreshadows the rather underwhelming song, which is not included on album. On the score-only presentation, "Chase/Rainbow Zeppelin" and "Follow the Yarn" are eight minutes of outstanding highlights; on the other hand, there is a special place in film music hell for a cue like "Escape." It's a Mothersbaugh score at heart, no doubt, so expect a whirlwind listening experience for a forgiving mood. ***
TRACK LISTINGS:
Total Time: 55:33
NOTES & QUOTES:
There exists no official packaging for this album.
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