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| Giacchino |
Zootopia: (Michael Giacchino) Just in time to serve
as an antidote to the xenophobic prejudice dominating America's
presidential election of 2016 due to the frightening rhetoric of the
Donald Trump campaign, Disney's
Zootopia is a brightly crafted
tale of hope in an otherwise racially divided society. That world, in
this case, is populated by anthropomorphic mammals, its city plagued by
corruption and suspicion that places the predator species in the
crosshairs of the government. It takes a young new cop, a feisty,
pragmatic, rural bunny, to solve the mystery behind the circumstances
causing discrimination against the predators, and
Zootopia goes
beyond its moral message to not only convey a self-discovery narrative
about the bunny, but one that will please feminist groups along the way
as well. Most importantly, despite the plethora of animated animal
flicks for kids during this era, the film represents an original Disney
concept at a time when so many of their features are derivative of
previously established ideas. The movie was both a critical and box
office success, suggesting spin-offs galore. While he is a veteran of
Pixar films and has tackled several short animated features through the
years, composer Michael Giacchino wades into the full-fledged Disney
feature realm for the first time with
Zootopia, a solid choice to
handle the project after his highly acclaimed animation music of the
prior dozen years. His four major scores of 2015 combined to form a
stunning whole, Giacchino's production for releases of that year among
the best work any composer has supplied in a short period of time in
many years. He wrote and recorded
Zootopia late in 2015, and
perhaps between
Inside Out and his other endeavors of the prior
months, he was sapped of his creative energy. For many film music
collectors,
Zootopia will be a disappointment, not because
Giacchino isn't proficient in the genre's musical needs, because he
certainly is. The score sounds in parts like a John Powell entry
stripped of all its pizzazz and character, rambling through jazzy
interludes and bouncing orchestral passages all the same but lacking any
distinctive personality. To return to the political analogy, successful
candidates are those who look like they are having fun on the stage at
their rallies. The same applies to film scores of this type. The best
rowdy children's scores sound like they were a hoot to write and
perform.
Zootopia's performances, unfortunately, don't exhibit
that sense of fun at all.
There is no deficiency of technical prowess in the
Giacchino's score for
Zootopia. The composer's handling of
different genres and unique instrumental arrays is not greatly
diminished. It seems that he got caught attempting to address a variety
of animal species with disparate styles and lost view of the whole
picture. While there is a minimal motif for the lead bunny, it's poorly
applied to just a few cues and Giacchino doesn't compensate by devising
an obvious, overarching identity for the concept as a whole. (Even Hans
Zimmer and his bloated crews managed to conjure and adapt a very catchy
theme for the
Madagascar films that held those movies together
despite much of the scores' material being pure crap on a technical
level.) Giacchino writes several motifs for
Zootopia, but they
are vignettes for specific situations rather than truly fluid, cohesive
bonding agents. The cue, "Suite From Zootopia," summarizes the best of
these ideas well, but even here, they expose themselves as largely
self-contained meanderings through genre and style that are pieced
together rather artificially. Enthusiasts of the composer's action mode
for large percussive romps from
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
and
Land of the Lost will appreciate the equivalent animalistic
chase cues in "Case of the Manchas" and "A Bunny Can Go Savage." But
when not trying to capture that free-wheeling John Powell spirit, the
score is oddly boring and, in many cues, nearly inaudible. The composer
does offer a few moments of his usual piano poignancy, but even these
seem muted and withdrawn. Long passages in the score can pass without
the music drawing any attention to itself, regardless of volume. Perhaps
some of this lack of engagement is related to the fact that Giacchino's
major motific progressions are rather static in their movements,
including the rather slow, three-note phrases that comprise the most
prominent theme, a strangely remorseful one at that. It's as though the
pacing of the sloth character dictated more than its fair share of
musical identity. There has been some speculation that a temp track was
to blame for the schizophrenic nature of this score, and that wouldn't
be surprising if it was revealed to be true. Also working against the
score is the dominant placement of the satisfying new Shakira song, "Try
Everything," which, ironically, conveys far more spirit and sense of
inclusiveness than anything in Giacchino's score. It's a shame that the
melody of the song wasn't integrated into the score, though that's not
necessarily a fault of Giacchino himself. Ultimately, his music simply
doesn't connect this time around because of a lack of cohesive
development and authentically exuberant personality.
** @Amazon.com: CD or
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| Bias Check: |
For Michael Giacchino reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.47
(in 45 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.14
(in 25,717 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes lyrics to the song but no extra information about the score or film.
