Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,637
Written 6/11/17
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Buy it... for one magnificent cue contributed by Conrad Pope for
the sentimental culmination of the film's plot, the remainder of the
score a challengingly schizophrenic exercise in comedic
micro-focusing.
Avoid it... unless you seek to use the music to intentionally make
your neighbors' dogs howl, because it's difficult to imagine a large
audience for this technically adept but nearly unlistenable parade of
parodies.
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| Zimmer |
The Boss Baby: (Hans Zimmer/Steve Mazzaro) While
ambitious in its attempt to interweave adult concepts of familial love
with a juvenile abundance of toilet humor, 2017's The Boss Baby
is arguably a unique Dreamworks development gone terribly astray,
yielding a marginal critical response but still endearing itself to
audiences with enough affection to generate decent box office grosses
and immediate sequel talk. At the core of the story is the desire for
love from one's parents, but that narrative is wrapped into a conspiracy
between corporate lobbying interests for the baby industry and the dog
industry battling over the market for that love. A really solid story
potentially resided in this concept, but director Tom McGrath's
execution of the popular picture book ultimately catered to potty humor
without remorse and offered a second half of action that failed to hold
the intended messaging together. The failures of the haphazard script
for The Boss Baby translate directly into a badly schizophrenic
soundtrack that contains a few token song placements but is mostly
guided by the Hans Zimmer machine of Remote Control Productions. Zimmer
is a Dreamworks veteran, and his collectors will recall that some of his
most emotionally engaging music in the 2000's and 2010's has existed for
the animated genre. His involvement always entails a collaboration with
one of his usual Remote Control crew members, however, and for The
Boss Baby that lucky soul is Steve Mazzaro, who has contributed
additional music to several Zimmer-led blockbuster scores in recent
years but has seldom received major, acknowledged credit. In projects
such as this one, there is always the hope that the Zimmer ghostwriter
in question will be able to prove himself the next John Powell or Lorne
Balfe. There remains no clear documentation about the balance of duties
between Zimmer and Mazzaro, an ongoing, significant problem with
attribution caused by Zimmer's methodology. There are moments that
remind strongly of vintage Zimmer sensibility, including the stomping,
theremin-laced Sergei Prokofiev rip in "Baby Brother" that harkens back
to Toys. But the personality of the score for The Boss
Baby is so outrageously unfocused that it's impossible to assign
likely attributions outside of one obvious cue by guest composer Conrad
Pope. It's typical to say that these frenetic animation scores are
difficult to swallow on album, but this one is so twitchy and anchorless
that it's an especially challenging prospect, especially if you have
screaming kids in your household already.
One of the ways to distinguish a master animated film
score writer is by measuring the work's accessibility on album, an area
in which Powell and Balfe have proven their chops multiple times.
Certainly, much of
The Boss Baby conveys similar intelligence in
its technical prowess, and its ability to maneuver through its thematic
core for so many genre adaptations is smartly conveyed, but the overall
narrative lacks any sense of genuine care. The performing ensemble is as
broad as anyone could expect, the orchestra and choir joined by jazz and
funk bands and a slew of soloists to yield a wild sonic variation that
begs for fanatical shifts in demeanor, meter, and volume at countless
abrupt turns, sometimes half a dozen in quantity within one cue. Aside
from a few culminating statements of the score's main theme, as in the
Randy Newmanesque, finger-snapping "Go Get Yourself a Horse," the score
doesn't achieve a solid connection with the listener as it tries too
hard to overplay its hand in each individual moment. The main theme for
the titular character and secondary identities for the evil
puppy-pushing entity and others are faithfully developed. You'll hear
everything from Danny Elfman's Catwoman theme to Elton John's "Can You
Feel the Love Tonight" among a nearly exhausting conveyor belt of mostly
transparent parodies of classical standards. The moments of orchestral
and choral awe, climaxing in "Upsies! I Need Upsies!," are too short,
sending you in search of extended performances of snazzy jazz renditions
of the main theme to appreciate. In the end, the only really memorable
moment in
The Boss Baby comes courtesy of veteran orchestrator
Conrad Pope, who was called into the project late to write and conduct
the "Love" cue because the scene's requirement for overly romantic
classical tones had eluded the Remote Control team. While arguably
borrowing much from the style of Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2, known
by film music enthusiasts for its insertion in
Alien and John
Williams' plundering of it in
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Pope
works wonders to shift the Zimmer and Mazzaro thematic core into
overflowing Golden Age sentimentality, and it stands out magnificently
from the rest of the otherwise tiring parody score. That remainder of
the soundtrack is a head-spinning exercise in lunacy, one requiring a
mood for the absolute most frenetic children's comedy scores. All of the
music is recorded beautifully, with crisp and deep presentations of
especially the orchestral players throughout. But don't expect this
music to compete with
Megamind or the
Kung Fu Panda scores
by most measures. Seek the one lovely and lengthy Pope cue and leave the
rest of the score to howling dogs.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
Bias Check:
For Hans Zimmer reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 2.85
(in 128 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 2.96
(in 299,193 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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