Filmtracks Traffic Rank: #2,329
Written 1/31/25
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Buy it... if you often appreciate the style of Hans Zimmer's more
intimate, improvised scores for small ensembles, especially if they
serve their films with counterintuitive personalities.
Avoid it... if you expect this score's blend of spirited reggae,
light jazz, maddening percussion effects, and meager string ambience to
form a cohesive narrative or convincing soul.
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| Zimmer |
The Weather Man: (Hans Zimmer/Various) Local
television news whether people are usually well liked by their
communities, but not one in Chicago in Gore Verbinski's 2005 movie,
The Weather Man. Played by Nicholas Cage, this on-screen
weather-caster is the subject of ridicule across the city, with people
repeatedly throwing fast food at him as he walks down the street. On top
of this stress, he has an extremely well-respected father (Michael
Caine) with whom he struggles to reconcile, he's estranged from his wife
and kids, and can't shake a bout of depression. The entirety of The
Weather Man depicts his efforts to overcome these issues while taking
a major promotion to a national show in New York City, though he can't
help assaulting both his wife's new boyfriend and son's counsellor in
the meantime. While he eventually finds some balance with the help of a
newfound interest in archery, he never comes to peace with all the
characters of his life. If that movie sounds like something you don't
want to witness, then many audiences agreed with you. Garnering middling
reviews and turning off disinterested viewers, Verbinski's film faded
into obscurity quickly despite its attempts at humorous but biting
social commentary. The director was in the midst of a productive
collaboration with composer Hans Zimmer at the time, the two men on
precisely the same page when it came to the message being conveyed by
The Weather Man. Zimmer literally brought the director into his
jam sessions to participate in the recording, leading to an amicable
experience all around. For the assignment, Zimmer jotted down a few
motifs for use throughout the score but ultimately let his team of
assistants, ghostwriters, and performers flesh out the actual finished
product from those summary ideas. Receiving official co-compositional
credit is James S. Levine, and although David Baerwald is the sole
ghostwriter receiving marginal credit, a handful of others contributed
music as well. The entirety of the project was handled informally at
Zimmer's studio, a process aided by the generally counterintuitive,
easy-going vibe of the work. The performances for the score's jam
sessions included Zimmer on his synthesizers, Levine on retro electric
piano, Heitor Pereira on electric bass, Ryeland Allison on percussion,
Martin Tillman on solo string layers, and the director himself on
occasional guitar. There is no broader orchestral element employed for
this intimate setting despite a new moments by Tillman and synths
emulating one.
With the small ensemble for
The Weather Man
established by just the handful of collaborators in Zimmer's studio, the
biggest decision about the contemporary sound for the film came when the
composer decided to approach the topic from a humorously off-kilter
perspective. Snowy Chicago isn't exactly the first place you'd expect to
hear lazy Caribbean reggae tones, but that's where Zimmer went for the
picture, building off of the sound of the electric piano to generate a
smooth and carefree attitude. The approach makes for unique music in the
composer's career, but it does nothing to really address the heart of
the narrative. For some listeners, the music's lack of dramatic
sincerity may have contributed to the film's inability to connect. A bit
of this nagging issue of inauthenticity may have been exacerbated by a
meandering narrative tone at times as well. Zimmer wrote the score's
main theme that follows the lead character from start to end, and it
repeats significantly through all the Zimmer-led cues. These are the
reggae portions, to a large degree, though the meandering theme of lazy
note pairs also diminishes down to more somber exploration, as in
"Refreshing" and "Frustrations." Most listeners will appreciate its
incarnations with faux-whistling in "I Have a Plan" and "The Weather
Man," however. The cues contributed to by other composer are where the
score really branches off into other ideas, starting with a family motif
for synthetic woodwind in "Shelly's Lesson," "Frustrations," "Family
Winterfest," and "Shelly Goes New York Style." These moments by Baerwald
are friendly musical wallpaper, light jazz that doesn't go anywhere.
Explosive percussive sequences like "Tartar Sauce" and the middle of
"Good Morning Mirror" by Clay Duncan, along with the slappy group effort
for "Clowns," are atrocious distractions. The Tillman portions in
"Frustrations," "Family Winterfest," "Something About Bob," and
"Accuracy Equals Focusing" try unsuccessfully to establish much-needed
dramatic resonance, but some weight is finally applied alongside piano
in "Funeral." Zimmer's own secondary theme for the character's
resilience in "19th Century Noble Man" and "Who Knows?" is a pure 1970's
representation of quietly confident defiance. All of these ideas
struggle to form a cohesive narrative flow, the stream-of-consciousness
process of assigning certain parts of the story to Zimmer's contributors
robbing the whole of a much-needed anchor that the main theme's reggae
personality alone doesn't really provide. The score, only released
legitimately on a somewhat limited 2022 album, sounds like it was fun to record,
and it may basically suffice for the attitude of the picture, but it
still leaves you searching for its soul at the end.
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- Score as Written for the Film: ***
- Score 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.
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