Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #972
Written 8/6/99, Revised 4/22/07
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Buy it... if you dig Hans Zimmer's early electronic jazz stylings
and want to hear a well-balanced, dynamic merging of his synthetics with
an orchestra.
Avoid it... if parody march music for dumb military settings tries
your patience after only 30 seconds.
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| Zimmer |
Renaissance Man: (Hans Zimmer) It was rare at the
time for director Penny Marshall to miss the mark completely, for her
films were typically so whimsically fluffy and enjoyable in an
undemanding sense. That changed with Renaissance Man, a misfire
about personal inspiration that takes an ordinary civilian and puts him
in charge of teaching the Army's most hopelessly dumb and difficult
recruits. The premise alone is ridiculous beyond comprehension,
especially when Danny DeVito as the teacher decided to turn around the
recruits using Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and "Henry V." Perhaps the most
embarrassing moment in any film during the 1990's came when the misfits,
led by Marky Mark, performed a synopsis of "Hamlet" in rap. A healthy
dose of logical fallacies, as well as overly-predictable plot
foreshadowing and cliched grasps at other films' messages, led
Renaissance Man to failure at the box office. Collaborating once
again with Marshall was composer Hans Zimmer, whose career was about to
launch itself to an Oscar win and a co-owned composition studio and
training center eventually described with not-so-polite words by many
older film score collectors. In listening to the score for
Renaissance Man, you can't help but get the impression that
Zimmer was placing most of his efforts at the time on the concurrent
The Lion King, undoubtedly a wise move. Not even the concept of
the music for Renaissance Man would be original, with Robert Folk
tackling In the Army Now at roughly the same time for a similar
style of film. But whereas Folk took a completely orchestral and
accomplished parody style into that equally doomed project, Zimmer would
stay well within the realm of his own synthetic/orchestral blend that
was still in its more hip and tolerable stages. Zimmer's early career
was defined by electronics in a contemporary sense, merging jazz, light
rock, and new age styles into scores that often served as fantastic
listening experiences outside of the film. Chronologically speaking,
Renaissance Man would be one of the last times he would make a
fully wholesale use of those stylings before his career would turn away
from Marshall's kind of films.
In retrospect, there's a freshness about Zimmer's
contemporary jazz and light rock music that is sadly missing from his
late 90's and 00's scores. There exists a dramatic tilt to some of that
sound in
Renaissance Man, with Zimmer's tendency to drift towards
the statement of dramatic anthems carrying parts of
Toys over
into this effort, but the ultimately cool, comedic nature of
Renaissance Man would allow Zimmer to let loose with music that
speaks far more towards his roots. He has become so removed from this
free-spirited sound in the succeeding decade that scores like this and
The Preacher's Wife, ones that merge the orchestra with his
electronics with a rarely-heard positive spin in the era, gain a certain
attraction over time. It's as close as Zimmer ever came to John Debney's
similar handling of such films, with a few Debney-like swings of theme
to be heard in
Renaissance Man. When it debuted, the score seemed
so trite and predictable, almost as though Zimmer literally was slamming
together a score as quickly as possible. And in many respects, the score
still suffers from those weaknesses; the military cues range from funny
to obnoxious. The solemn spirit in "Benitez Does Henry," with that
trademark Zimmer trumpet work floating in the distance, raises direct
quotations from the dramatic speech in
Toys. "Stay With Me,"
conversely, uses varied brass in a faux John Philip Sousa style of march
that quickly becomes annoying (the parade atmosphere would eventually be
ripped in full in "Everyone is a Hero"). Defying description is the end
of "Letter from Home," which introduces the moronic recruits with a
bastardized army chant over a wild rock rhythm. The highlights of the
score are the light keyboarded jazz heard in "Welcome to the Army,"
"Serving Your Country," and "Victory Starts Here," all of which are more
introspective in a soothing, contemporary sense. The latter cue is
worthy of any compilation of early Zimmer works, especially with its
well-mixed brass backing, and it's one of the somewhat rare moments when
there exists a perfect, dynamic balance between Zimmer's electronics and
the orchestra. The final cue on the album is the rap version of "Hamlet"
heard in the film, and while it's probably a necessary inclusion to make
the album complete, it will seal the album's fate for some.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
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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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