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King Kong— | ||||||||||||||
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ames Newton Howard is certainly no stranger to the Hollywood music scene. He's well known, with more than 90 films to his credit. He's been nominated for the Oscar six times, for the Golden Globe twice and for the Grammy once. Between 1994 and 2005, ASCAP presented him with 28 awards for his work in film and television. His film scores include The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Fugitive, Pretty Woman, The Prince of Tides, Grand Canyon, Dave, Primal Fear, Glengarry Glen Ross, The Devil's Advocate, Dinosaur, Batman Begins, The Interpreter, The Ring Two, Miss Congeniality 2, Collateral, The Village, Hidalgo and the live-action Peter Pan. Quite a resume.
All that being said, then, one has to wonder why this score isn't more memorable. Not that it's bad—far from it! It's just that—well, there's really nothing new or inspiring here. Howard is a real pro, and he gives the action scenes the tension they need, but overall there is a certain je ne sais quoi, a lack of imagination.
No doubt it has to do with the timing. Reportedly, Howard received the assignment more or less at the last minute, replacing Howard Shore, who had scored Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. Shore's score was rejected, which left James Howard only five weeks to complete nearly three hours of new music. Talk about pressure! Shore had been at work for five months, and even though there are mutterings on the Internet that his music, rejected or not, was better than what Howard produced, Howard has to receive credit for delivering the goods. So why, in the view of this reviewer, the letdown? Maybe James Howard just didn't have enough time to really immerse himself in the film's 1930s setting. There are a few moments of period flavor—like the short clarinet passage in the second cue, "Defeat Is Always Momentary."
That's all there is
Or maybe he couldn't shake the awareness that he was laboring under a huge shadow—not that of Kong, but of Max Steiner, whose score for the 1933 version is considered by many critics to be one of the best film scores ever. It can be heard in a lengthy quote in the current flick as the music that the orchestra is playing when Kong is on display in New York City. (This is a straight lift form Steiner's '33 score.)
But this shouldn't be construed as a negative review. Some cues work very well indeed. "It's Deserted," heard as the filmmakers begin their exploration of Skull Island, is creepy and evocative. "Beautiful" and "Central Park" are romantic cues done on flute and piano with backing strings that really help to underscore the growing feeling between Ann Darrow and her monstrous captor.
Other standout cues include "Tooth and Claw," an exciting action piece that makes good use of Kong's theme, four descending chords. There's also a brass line that sounds rather like an inversion of the Skull Island theme used in the first cue, "King Kong," heard over the film's opening title. In "That's All There Is," for the scene in which Ann bonds with Kong by doing her vaudeville routine, the jazzy riff heard earlier in "Defeat Is Always Momentary" is heard in a nice minute-long exploration. Now, if only the entire score had been this much fun!
But why carp? What Howard has done here, considering the time constraints, is remarkable. If there aren't as many memorable themes as one might hope for, well, let one try to do better. The music here goes very well indeed with the film, so if it doesn't stand on its own as well as it might, it could nevertheless have been far worse.
The CD comes with a not-very-exciting foldout "poster" of the otherwise photogenic Mr. Kong, and a selection of stills from the film. There's little else here in terms of goodies, aside from a long list of musicians and vocalists printed IN CAPITAL LETTERS and agate type, all but impossible to read even if you wanted to.
If Cinefex magazine can put out an entire issue (one of its best, too) on the original Kong, why couldn't Sony, which presumably has a lot more money at its disposal, stop working on crackpot copyright protection schemes and give us some love? Production sketches, maybe a personal word from the composer ... anything. — Al
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