and its spinoffs is a known quantity,
and a profitable one at that. Having grossed over two billion dollars
for DreamWorks, the concept started with extremely low levels of quality
in 2005 but managed to improve upon its reputation as the lead
characters became better explored in latter adventures. The humorous and
nonsensical gang of misfit animals from
but instead gets stranded in continental Africa. There, they
come to terms with their past and each other, the story of Alex the lion
taking center stage as the penguins of the tale persist in their efforts
to repair an airplane they can take back home. The story sets up the
immediately successive events in the third film, which ushers the
animals to Monte Carlo. The soundtracks for the
movies
have always been a combination of pop culture silliness and original
music by Hans Zimmer and his team of ghostwriters at Remote Control
Productions. For average mainstream viewers, the adaptation of the 1993
dance song, "I Like to Move It," remains the musical identity of the
franchise thanks to Sacha Baron Cohen's popular performance of that tune
in the first movie, and it has figured prominently in all three of the
movies. Zimmer's contribution has earned its own
following through the years, his main escape theme from the first movie
evolving into not only the concept's core instrumental identifier but
also becoming an affable staple of the composer's concert tours. The
scores for these movies are extremely fragmented, a necessity due to the
surrounding song and parody music placements. In this case, the primary
composing credit for
goes to Zimmer
and rap artist William James Adams Jr. (otherwise known as will.i.am) of
Black Eyed Peas fame, the former continuing the themes and style of the
prior score while the latter performing songs on the soundtrack because
of his voice role in the cast.
That will.i.am received any credit for the score is a
tragedy, because the main songs performed by him on the soundtrack seem
more informed by Zimmer's melodies than the other way around. The songs
in
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa regurgitate "I Like to Move It"
for will.i.am and feature an adaptation of Zimmer's escape theme as the
songs "The Traveling Song" and "Alex on the Spot." Zimmer's friendship
theme, meanwhile, remains the basis of the song "Best Friends." The
fresher material from will.i.am in "Big and Chunky" and "She Loves Me"
is regrettably obnoxious. A handful of parody placements litter the film
and soundtrack on top of these will.i.am performances, and they keep the
experience extremely disjointed. Aside from often pilfering Zimmer's
themes, these songs are of zero interest to film score collectors. For
these listeners, the credit afforded to will.i.am needed to be shifted
to Zimmer's diligent ghostwriters that actually wrote the majority of
the score. Some of the names involved carry over in the same roles from
Madagascar, James Dooley writing the espionage-inspired action
material that again exposes its roots in Michael Giacchino's
The
Incredibles and Heitor Pereira handling the easy-going and chipper,
island-suave personality. While Pereira's impact on these scores is
fairly minimal, Dooley's snazzier action music does recur frequently,
using the same bassline phrases throughout score for consistency. These
contributions are somewhat annoying, however, in that they clearly
deviate from the style of the remainder of the score. For that mass of
work, Zimmer turns to Lorne Balfe for
Madagascar: Escape 2
Africa, and it is Balfe who seems largely responsible for the
increasingly robust dramatic appeal of this and the subsequent sequel
score. The highlights of this work are when Balfe (and, for a couple of
cues, Geoff Zanelli) teams with Zimmer or adapts his melodies, though
you don't hear the fruits of this work on the commercial album, which is
a disgrace that concentrates, naturally, on the will.i.am and parody
tracks. Only about sixteen minutes of true score material is contained
on that album, ignoring many of the best instrumental sequences in the
film.
The cues in the score for
Madagascar: Escape 2
Africa are often extremely short due to the genre's normal habits,
but an enjoyable half hour of material (if not more) could easily be
collected from the Zimmer's team here, some of whom have taken the
opportunity through the years to release cues of their own making from
this score on their individual websites. The existing, main escape theme
by Zimmer really flourishes in this sequel, not only adapted by
will.i.am in the songs but especially when applied to the score by
Zimmer, Balfe, and Zanelli. The theme really seems to concentrate on
Alex the lion in the story, following his childhood and later familial
relations in the plot. The idea also continues to follow the original
Zoosters as they endeavor to triumph together again over man and nature.
This score exposes it as a far more malleable and engaging theme, its
underlying rhythms still chugging away on hyperactive strings (this
motif alone is a calling card of the franchise) but the melody on top is
really developed well in this work. It always helps to have a few
Richard Harvey woodwind performances in the mix, the best moments of
this score emulating the tenderness of
The Lion King using those
instruments. On the commercial album's presentation, this material opens
the product with the flashback sequence in "Once Upon a Time in Africa"
(the album version of this cue is far superior to the film's mix, which
forces an incongruous brass stinger at the outset) and persists in the
pleasing, likely concert-targeted and slightly dance-inspired "Rescue
Me" and the sensitive moment of motherly care in "Foofie." (The
character's name in the movie is Florrie, so who knows what Zimmer was
thinking here.) A substantial number of cues attributed at least in part
to Balfe apply this theme surprisingly well in unreleased material, a
great performance of the escape theme revealed on brass in "He's Come
Home/Julien Arrives," a soft reprise of the exotic woodwinds featured
throughout "Banishment," and a hopeful, pretty version of this tact
persisting in "Makunga Has Spoken." A massive performance of the main
theme for full ensemble opens "Ride the Wave," a moment arranged by
Zanelli. The applications of this theme are spaced in a way to provide a
solid narrative to the score even with the short cue times and multiple
composers involved.
Meanwhile, the other theme returning from
Madagascar in the score is Zimmer's effortlessly happy friendship
identity, which still sounds like a suspicious holdover from "Sesame
Street" and is a little obnoxious in that regard. On the album, it only
figures at the end of "Volcano" and in the middle of "Monochromatic
Friends," which pushes a snippet of the score's associated romance music
in between Dooley silliness. Unreleased is the mass of adaptations of
this theme for conversational scenes of compassion. From Balfe are the
nicely somber friendship theme performances on solo horn and strings in
"One in a Million/Dying Holes," a shift of this approach to evocative
woodwinds in "Melman Professes," and a celebratory snippet in "Crossing
the Line." Zimmer himself is credited with nice bursts of the friendship
theme in "Little Squirt" and "Big Squirt." The score for
Madagascar:
Escape 2 Africa also features a new theme by Zimmer, a stomping,
ominous identity for the lions and their culture of dominance. Heard
only in "Once Upon a Time in Africa" on the album, this driving theme of
adversity recurs in the score during "He's Come Home," an alternate
version of "Party," "Warpaint," "Banishment," and "Life Isn't Fair,"
spanning some different emotional realms in the latter cues. The score's
best action music is not available on the commercial album, led by
"Found the Clog" and "Rotisserie" by Balfe and the brief "Basset Hound"
by Zanelli. As mentioned before, these cues desperately needed combined
into suites on the commercial album, which, at less than 50 minutes,
could have easily offered this music for a satisfactory overall
listening experience. As it stands, the album is really only useful for
the trio of main escape theme performances in "Once Upon a Time in
Africa," "Rescue Me," and "Foofie." The remainder of the score has been
bootlegged endlessly through the years in varying sound quality;
listeners need to remember that the album version of "Once Upon a Time
in Africa" is superior, however, and, for most casual Zimmer collectors,
this one track will be more than enough representation from the score.
Balfe's return yields some noteworthy highlights in the subsequent score
in the franchise, though
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa remains the
best entry for the infectiously cute main escape theme. In an ideal
world, the best score material from all three films would be combined
into one rollicking album.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Score as Written for the Film: ***
- Music as Heard on Album: *
- Overall: **
| 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.
|
