The collaborative structure allowed guys like Danny Elfman
to score by telecommuting, writing a theme, sending it to Hans Zimmer
for a "beefing up" assignment by several of his in-house pupils, and
then having John Debney involved to orchestrate and oversee the final
production. Throw in a director who himself composes certain sections
and chooses instrumentation while delegating short cues to half a dozen
other composers who raised their hands when the call (or word of mouth)
for composers went out. For
Spy Kids, you can picture these
people walking into the studio, mucking around for a while,
spontaneously conjuring up a minute of ideas, testing out these ideas
like a group of giddy teenagers with new band equipment in the garage,
and then going to lunch. Of course, it's not actually that simple, but
the true logistical nightmare in this case must reside with the
administrative studio assistant who has to figure out who gets what
share of the royalties and then cuts the checks by each ten seconds of
music contributed. You can almost picture several Golden Age composers
rolling in their graves. In any case, the frenetic, Latin-flavored score
for
Spy Kids gives the listener the impression that the group of
composers had a lot of effortless fun working together on the project.
As a cohesive whole, the score surprisingly functions well enough.
Elfman and Debney, the two blockbuster names on the project, had
collaborated before (
My Favorite Martian), and their styles when
writing for this genre are well matched. But not all of the other styles
mesh as well. For the trained film music ear, it is easy to determine
where one composer left off and another began. Rodriguez's guitars,
Elfman's plucky acoustics, Gregson-Williams' keyboards, and Debney's
orchestra weave in and out with recognizable shifts in style. If you're
a style purist seeking a score of immaculate clarity and vision,
Spy
Kids is not the answer.
The music's sheer zaniness creates the only consistency
that the film requires from it. On album, however, the jigsaw puzzle of
pieces begins to fall apart. The most obvious drawback of the "scoring
by committee of 8+ composers" approach is that each cue is short in
length and shallow in realization. Just as one composer's take on the
score begins to prevail, the music shifts 180 degrees and throws you
off. Such an example of this occurs between "My Parents Are Spies,"
which contains the rather mellow but stylish Elfman title theme, and
"Spy Wedding," which bursts into an immediate flamenco guitar and choral
subtheme. Not all of the cue cuts are as dramatic as this, but just when
you settle into the Debney school of spaciously orchestral kiddie action
cues, you get thrust upon a Gavin Greenaway array of newer Media
Ventures synthesizer tricks. Perhaps for someone who isn't familiar with
each composer individually, this won't be as much of a problem. The very
first music composed for the film was sent in by Elfman, who was
originally approached by Rodriguez for the project. In a page blatently
torn from
The Nightmare Before Christmas, Elfman recycles his
song "This is Halloween" for "Floop's Song." With actor Alan Cumming
performing his best Elfman singing imitation, it's hard not to irritated
when hearing
The Nightmare Before Christmas defaced like this.
The remaining Elfman cues, which are three or four in quantity, tend to
combine the acoustics of the composer's softer, late 90's material with
a marginal orchestral presence. The exception is the more robust "Buddy
Pack Escape," for which Elfman assembles an ambitious orchestral action
piece. Debney, who is the master at taking other composers' ideas and
translating them into a finished orchestral product, doesn't actually
have any trademark cues of his own throughout
Spy Kids, though
you can occasionally hear a bit of
My Favorite Martian or
Inspector Gadget in the more complex ensemble performances within
the action cues.
Unless you are a die-hard completist of either Elfman
or Debney's work, though, there is nothing substantially individual on
this short album other than the value that Elfman's fans may place on
the familiar "Floop's Song." Ironically, the best material in the
Spy
Kids score comes from the auxiliary composers. The Latin flavor
infused by Rodriguez and Harry Gregson-Williams is a definite asset; the
various guitars alone are a tenacious spark of life. Unfortunately, this
ethnic style diminishes as the score progresses, losing its ability to
glue all the disparate pieces together. It is Gregson-Williams who
eventually finalizes the Cortex family theme for the film, with
performances of the heroic, synthetically aided theme (a highlight of
the score) in the short opening and closing tracks of the score portion
of the album. The selling point of the album for the label was the
obnoxious teenage rock song by Fonda at the end, a truly hideous entry
in its lack of originality. But as for the score in sum, it bubbles and
overflows with fun sense of creativity, and this wild ride can somewhat
compensate for rocky listening experience caused by the short length of
each cue and structural idea. You have to wonder what Debney thought
specifically of this project, given his spoken reservations about the
Media Ventures process of committee writing through the years. Musically
speaking,
Spy Kids doesn't have the same kind of inspiring
integrity as most of the solo efforts by any of the involved artists,
nor does it overwhelm you with sonic grandeur at any point. But its
spunk is summarized perfectly by the flair of Rodriguez's "Spy Wedding"
track co-composed with Los Lobos. A vibrant recording of the orchestra,
extremely crisp from start to finish, is a major plus (if only Elfman's
concurrent
Planet of the Apes had featured the same clarity, it
might have been a stronger listening experience). Parts of the album
will rock your room with energy, but the somewhat incongruous styles of
each involved composer will leave you with a fading, unenthusiastic
memory of the music once the fun stops.
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