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Written 11/22/08
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Buy it... if you have been enamored by each of John Powell's
similarly frenetic, parody-style animation scores of the 2000's.
Avoid it... if you're expecting to hear anything dramatically
different from Powell's usual, functional but predictable formula for
these assignments.
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| Powell |
Bolt: (John Powell) For years, Walt Disney Pictures
has aspired to reclaim the thrown of king of animation from Pixar,
something the studio didn't even have the success of Dreamworks in at
least partially achieving. The trademark 3-D animation and strong,
personable stories of the Pixar films has, frankly, left Disney's solo
efforts in the dust over the late 1990's and 2000's, and the studio
figured its best bet in closing the gap would be to work directly with
Pixar's John Lasseter to help resurrect their own, homegrown appeal. The
first result of that collaboration is Bolt, the safe financial
bet of the animation genre in the 2008 holiday season. The title
character is a dog in a television series in which he saves the life of
his owner, Miley Cyrus, from the evil Malcolm McDowell (no surprise) in
episodes week after week. Unfortunately for the dog, he doesn't realize
that his powers are a fiction and, upon accidentally being shipped off
across America, he realizes the boundaries of his abilities the hard
way. But Bolt is a journey and adversity story of the classic
order, and the majority of critics disappointed by the film have cited
the predictable and tired plot as its major detraction. Predictability
is something that plagues nearly all animated films, and it has a way of
diminishing their soundtracks as well. Composer John Powell continues
his journey into the animated realm with another Disney assignment here,
expanding upon a year that already included the hyperactive kiddie flick
Horton Hears a Who!, the action-packed Jumper and
Hancock, and the drama Stop-Loss. In many ways, Powell has
become a more mainstream equivalent of John Debney, both in quantity and
quality. The music that Powell produces so frequently for children's
films specifically is always of high enough quality to suffice for the
purposes of the pictures, but rarely do any of these scores excel to a
level clearly beyond the others.
The question facing film score collectors in the case
of
Bolt is this: does it simply mirror all of the wholesome
parody elements of Powell's previous fluffy children's scores or does it
actually break any substantial new ground? Unfortunately, the former
applies. Once again, Powell gives us a score of basic quality that
simply doesn't distinguish itself with a unique sense of style. Like
most of Powell's other attractive and functional scores for the genre,
Bolt is tonally pleasant from start to finish. A sensitive title
theme for the dog is affectionately introduced in "Meet Bolt" and
eventually flourishes with the entire ensemble by the last scenes. As
the dog meets auxiliary characters in New York, Powell treats them to
ethnic stereotypes that fit their personas well. The trip across America
comes with genre-bending shifts as necessary to denote the ambience of
the stops along the way. The inevitable rescue and reunion scenes at the
end feature Powell's dense and dazzling action material at its most
enthusiastic, testing the Los Angeles performers' abilities. Occasional
lifts from other well known scores are a product of the parody needs of
Bolt. The overall package, while consistent in its relative
anonymity, does have some standout cues. The presentation of the title
theme in "Meet Bolt" exposes a sensibility that reminds of Jerry
Goldsmith's lovely character themes of the early 1990's, especially in
the brief performance on piano at the end of the cue. The subsequent
"Bolt Transforms" cue contains electronic enhancements for rhythmic
purposes that in twenty years may sound as ridiculously outdated as Lalo
Schifrin's music from 1970's cop thrillers. The woodwind jazz of "New
York" and Mediterranean swing in "Meet Mittens" cross genre boundaries
that aren't developed significantly later in the score. The heroic
"Where Were You on St. Rhino's Day?" is a bizarre merging of the
anthemic tendencies of Hans Zimmer and Patrick Doyle.
The character-performed "Sing-Along Rhino" is an
obnoxious vocal performance of the theme song motif for the dog's show.
A slight Western touch in the staggering of rhythms is not far behind in
the journey. The smoothest thematic development comes in the pretty
piano-led "Las Vegas." Powell cranks up the Debney-like orchestral
action starting with "Saving Mittens" and culminating in "Rescuing
Penny," which bloats the dog's theme out to magnificent proportions for
the highlight of the album. That cue unfortunately suffers from a poor
transition at its and, abruptly fading the title theme as "A Real Live
Superbark" shifts the key awkwardly. The full blown Western adventure
tone of "Home at Last" bounces with all the glee that Powell's scores
typically exhibit at their conclusions, though
Bolt offers a
vocal reprise of "Barking at the Moon" (a song heard earlier in the
film) that is a shameless pull from the spirit of Goldsmith's
Wild
Rovers score, even down to the closing progressions and the tone of
Jenny Lewis' voice. The two songs in
Bolt are decent, but the
Miley Cyrus and John Travolta duet was likely among the young singer's
reason for receiving the role in this film in the first place. If you
don't mind the blatant commercialism, the rock song is non-offensive.
The extended version of "Barking at the Moon" is a country piece that
lacks any of the charm of the short reprise at the end. The songs and
score together fit nicely enough to accomplish everything that Disney
was seeking. But despite a rousing title theme, listeners won't hear
much to take away from the experience. A short running time for the
score (under thirty minutes) is a potential detraction for some,
especially given the film's 96-minute running time. There is much
admiration to be sent Powell's way for being able to produce scores like
the one for
Bolt with predictable functionality, but there still
hasn't been a truly break-through solo effort in the genre for Powell
since his heralded early collaborations with Harry Gregson-Williams. It
looks as though, however, he'll have plenty of opportunities in the
future.
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Bias Check:
For John Powell reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.31
(in 51 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.16
(in 52,894 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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