Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #1,568
Written 2/18/10, Revised 3/18/11
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Buy it... on the regular CD album if you desire a faithful
representation of the music heard in the film, from the plethora of
likable songs from many decades ago to Alexandre Desplat's extremely
perky parody score.
Avoid it... if you expect the twenty minutes of Desplat's plucky,
bouncing score on the only lossless product available for the soundtrack
to heal your schizophrenia, for it achieves its aim in providing a manic
atmosphere for the film's characters at the expense of a sane listening
experience.
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| Desplat |
Fantastic Mr. Fox: (Alexandre Desplat) Delayed by
several years of studio wrangling, this adaptation of the 1970 Roald
Dahl children's novel used stop motion photography and an all-star cast
to launch its way up to positions on critics' lists of top 2009 films.
The clever and witty story tells of the battles of a fox and his family
with three farmers neighboring his home, eventually escalating into
all-out war between the three men and the vast majority of the animal
kingdom. The creatures steal chickens and produce from the farmers and
are forced to run an extensive digging operation to elude the extensive
attempts by the humans to expose, trap, or flood them out. A series of
metaphorical connections to everyday life in the human realm give
Fantastic Mr. Fox its quirky charm, and in a fashion true to the
spirit of the tale, the stealthy animals get the better of their enemies
in the end. Despite almost unanimously positive reviews from critics,
Fantastic Mr. Fox didn't become a noteworthy success story at the
box office, also taking a back seat during the awards season. Nominated
for an Academy Award for his efforts on the film, though, was composer
Alexandre Desplat, in part a somewhat undeserving but predictable
byproduct of the film's prominent use of a variety of original parody
music, older soundtrack tunes, and popular songs from yesteryear. Due to
Jarvis Crocker's employment as the voice of one of the characters in the
film, he claimed that he wrote three or four songs for the production,
though only one appears on its soundtrack album. Songs by The Beach Boys
and Burl Ives dominate a soundtrack presentation that sprinkles other
vintage melodies with a pair of early 1970's themes by French romance
master Georges Delerue. The overall packaging, even in the film, was a
challenging one for Desplat, whose contributions on the primary CD album
may have only amounted to 20 minutes but do manage to maintain a
basically cohesive flow. Enthusiasts of the composer will be able to
seek an MP3 score-only album for a better presentation of his music
alone. It had been ten years since Desplat's previous (and only other)
entry in the animated genre, his mainstream career exploding in the late
2000's with a series of well-positioned assignments in the drama and
fantasy genres. There is no doubt that Fantastic Mr. Fox gave
Desplat a chance to toss aside his unique and increasingly consistent
style of writing for such pictures and instead let loose with the intent
to humorously parody several genres in the process of giving the Fox
family and the pursuing farmers refreshingly silly musical
representations.
While very little in
Fantastic Mr. Fox may sound
like Desplat's recent major works, there is a common attention to detail
in a very dry mix. In its sense of fluttering movement,
treble-emphasized tones, and intimate presentation, this score is
definitely within the composer's usual mode of operation. Desplat
departs from the norm, however, by saturating
Fantastic Mr. Fox
with a country spirit that ranges from twangy, plucky rhythms of simple
personality to marches of a John Philip Sousa variety and a villain's
theme obviously intended to imitate Ennio Morricone's famed Spaghetti
Western sound (complete with Desplat's own whistling performances).
Almost entirely driven by bouncing, frivolous rhythms, the score
utilizes plucked strings, banjo, glockenspiel, xylophone, and puffing
woodwinds to enthusiastically accompany the antics of the protagonists.
Longer solo cello lines provide the thematic material for those animals
as well. Never does the music become truly dark or menacing, the
villains (and their evil hench-rat) treated to a timpani, solo trumpet,
and snare-led march that grows out of the Morricone material to flourish
as a pompous, almost swashbuckling piece complete with funny lyrics sung
by a small children's choir. A solo boy soprano beautifully transforms
the theme into a minute-long moment of contemplation at the end, the
only real lamentation in the score. Desplat's music, in its general
attitude, could give a person a nervous breakdown if not prepared for
its instrumentally colorful and undeniably bright, optimistic
atmosphere. Although the composer does develop two consistent thematic
lines in
Fantastic Mr. Fox, each dominating their halves of the
score, brief cue times by necessity make the CD album experience, even
with the score material condensed, a challenge. The most enticing music
on the soundtrack, not surprisingly, comes from Delerue; these
predictably lovely selections, despite their archival sound quality,
will be a tonic for those suffering from the jitters after hearing
Desplat's almost manic momentum. It's difficult to blame the composer
for the absolutely unlistenable final presentation of music on the CD
album for
Fantastic Mr. Fox (the download-only follow-up album
provided almost the complete score in early 2010, but in lossy sound),
though the overwhelming innocence with which Desplat adapts his dainty,
light-drama mannerisms for this assignment will alone present too big a
challenge for film score collectors not friendly to the general
characteristics of his music outlined at the start of this paragraph.
Indeed, his approach to this concept could drive a person insane, and
since that was probably the intent, it's easy to get the feeling that
his one is aimed exclusively at enthusiasts of the film.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Album: **
- Overall: **
Bias Check:
For Alexandre Desplat reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.41
(in 32 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.22
(in 16,610 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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