Published on Jun 1, 2000
Usually, when I review a soundtrack to a Disney movie, I have a
pretty solid idea about what is happening in the plot, even if I
haven’t seen the movie at that point. Their latest release,
Dinosaur, is one film I haven’t seen – I was going to take
my four-year-old after being stunned by the preview trailer we saw
waiting for
Toy Story 2 to start, but a co-worker of mine said the film
was incredibly violent and scared her 10-year-old. (Then again, my
daughter watches “Trauma: Life In The E.R.” with me, so it can’t be
that bad.)
But after listening to the soundtrack to
Dinosaur, I’m struck by two distinct things. First, it’s not
as easy to follow any sort of natural progression in the movie
based on the songs alone. Second – and this is much more important
and a little disturbing – it feels like there is some magic that is
lost throughout a good portion of the music.
Granted, there are moments in James Newton Howard’s score that
are almost as breathtaking as some of the shots I’ve seen of the
film. On pieces like “The Egg Travels,” “The Courtship” and “It
Comes With A Pool,” the true atmosphere of the film seems to be
captured musically, and these selections are the ones you’ll
undoubtedly find yourself going back to again and again.
But early on in the soundtrack, the first problem hits. At
times, it’s almost like the master volume had been accidentally
podded down to almost a whisper. This makes selections like “Inner
Sanctum/The Nesting Grounds” very difficult to hear – and almost
guarantees you’ll be blown through your living room wall once the
volume returns to normal on other selections. In all, a better
balance could have been attempted.
But this kind of leads into the other problem I have with
Dinosaur. I don’t necessarily mind that I can’t follow some
kind of a mental script when listening to the disc, though there
are times that such a picture in one’s mind can help. What I do
mind is that there really seems to be no spark that lights up the
bulk of the music. Selections like “Raptors/Stand Together,” “The
Cave,” “Kron & Aladar Fight” and “They’re All Gone” all fail to
move the listener in any direction… they just sit there. That is
something I’ve rarely said about any Disney soundtrack, but it’s
sadly the case with this one.
Admittedly, Howard had a difficult task ahead of him with this
score. I mean, how do you determine what kind of music best fits
prehistoric scenes? (While I’ve enjoyed Lebo M’s work on other
soundtracks, his presence on
Dinosaur regrettably doesn’t add anything special to the
mix.) It’s almost as if Howard was fighting a losing battle before
he wrote note number one, though if anyone could have overcome such
odds, it’s Howard.
I don’t want to leave the impression that
Dinosaur is a terrible disc; it has its solid moments,
though I hardly think the tots will want to make this disc daily
required listening as they would with other Disney soundtracks. But
what is troublesome is that even the grown-up kids might not see
this soundtrack as magical as others they grew up with — and
that’s a possibly disturbing trend that could be set with this
disc. Let’s hope that it’s a temporary blip on Disney’s soundtrack
radar.