REVIEW: Jumanji

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Jumanji is, inherently, a horror score. I’ve seen it classified on the internet as just about everything but that. But let us get it straight: through and through, Jumanji is a horror score.

With that being said, Jumanji is, no less, a mediocre score. But it is an interesting sort of mediocre. Every so often, a composer will take on a truly awful film, perhaps due to director loyalty, and rather than write a score which is tailor made for it, they take ideas brewing in their head and play with them. They take old ideas and toy around with them, insert new ideas and test their effect, and fill in the rest with underscore (composed of tried and true older ideas). This is exactly what Horner has done with Jumanji.

Jumanji consists of two main themes--the first of which is a sweet, sentimental main theme introduced in the first track, almost always played on exotic woodwinds by Tony Hinnigan, or on a standard flute. With it is some playful “fun” music, assumedly representing the kids, that really isn’t much to make note of since its not really memorable. Playful flutes and strings mark its occasional occurrence, but that is it. But the aforementioned sweet and sentimental theme really is a precious one that shows a lot of love and care in its emotion. It shows up often enough, but its performance in Mighty Joe Young is far superior.

The other theme is one often played on low brass that is evocative of suspense. Its a four note theme, sometimes expanded to eight, that does its best to express dread. It stands well enough on its own, but never receives more than this sparse orchestration, rendering it a relatively immobile, singularly focused theme. It shows up in other parts of the orchestra from time to time, but it never reaches an emotional height like it does when played by the low brass. Interestingly and ironically enough, this theme would used verbatim by Gabriel Yared in his score for Troy, where it makes laughable appearances over the music that Yared wrote for the 1000 Ships scene (Horner’s superior music for that scene is contained in his track, “Troy”). The theme was appropriate for a silly horror film, but would have been completely out of place in a “serious” epic.

The orchestration in Jumanji is imposingly sparse. I cannot tell if this is the result of narrow writing on Horner’s part or if he was only given a tiny orchestra (or both). This is wonderful for the horror bits (emphasized by strings and woodwinds) and also works well for the sentimental bits (woodwinds and piano), almost necessary for both (especially considering the status of Jumanji as a horror score), but when the music kicks into action, it begins to fail. The action sequences are rendered with fast brass over maybe one or two other instrumental lines under it--usually some sort of prototypical 90’s Horner action string work. The action music falls flat for this reason, because of its poor rendering and the feeling of “one instrument playing each line” sound, it comes out somewhat uninteresting and boring.

The saving grace to the orchestration is that this score features some of the better work of Hinnigan and Co. The shakuhachi wails away at all the right moments played flawlessly by Kazu Matsui, and the toyo work by Hinnigan in “Rampage Through Town” and “The Monsoon” is some of the catchiest work he provides, and it isn’t explored nearly enough in this or future scores.

A lot of people are bothered by the “Monkey Mayhem” track (some of which spills over to the track “Alan Parrish”). “Monkey Mayhem” starts out with a good bit of typical Horner horror scoring and finishes with a crazed array of frantic noises lead by what sounds like a synthesized kazoo with wild trumpets, as though Horner told his orchestra to just “go wild,” not terribly dissimilar to We’re Back, A Dinosaur’s Story I think this track is a lot of fun, especially knowing Horner’s career as I do, and I think it evokes the wild nature of the animal kingdom as well as anyone could. This is a kids movie, after all, and the fun sense of wildness fits the atmosphere perfectly.

To this point, I haven’t spoken in great detail about the sound of Jumanji aside from general references to “horror” and such. Well, Jumanji is a score with a rather significant identity crisis. This crisis gives way to an inconsistent soundscape as a result of the various elements of this score being just different enough that they don’t blend together. As I mentioned above, I feel as though Horner wrote a score for his career and not this movie, and as such, I never get a “feel” for Jumanji as much as I do for what has come and what is yet to come. Here is what I noticed:

The “crazed” music has a lot in common with the simultaneous Casper, and is rendered much more interestingly in that score. A lot of the crazy music gives way to jungle-esque music, again which would be rendered with far more depth, detail, and emotion in the forthcoming Mighty Joe Young, as here, it tends to ride the line of flat, cliche jungle music (when it appears, which is not often).

Jumanji’s horror music is typically a reworking of the quieter bits from Aliens, usually with some spice thrown in to reflect animals on the screen (a high brass passage for a flying bird or low brass sound for an elephant, or something of that sort). The same fluttering woodwinds on strings with shrieks from the violins or the low brass are used here as was in Aliens to the same awesome effect. When it isn’t reworking the horror of Aliens, it is reworking the horror of Thunderheart, as the same vocal calls to the wind start and end this score, setting the stage for the appropriate atmosphere of terror that a game come alive would need.

The action music is oftentimes an inferior reworking of what appears in Willow as if it were filtered through The Pagemaster and again through the sparseness and simplicity of Clear and Present Danger. The same quick action sound and fast brass hits are present as in Willow, with the same overarching adventurous and frightening tone within the music, but hurt badly by the orchestrational rendering and/or the small size of the orchestra. For example, “The Hunter” is a rewrite of the action music found in the “Canyon of Mazes” track of Willow, but without the pizzaz that made that track so awesome--it seems the orchestra just isn’t large enough to emphasize the sound of the quick brass hits and/or not enough instruments involved to augment them.

I believe one of the more interesting aspects of Jumanji is how it allows us to look into the future of Horner’s writing. The quiet sentimental bits set the stage for the ethereal, breathtaking music as found in The Spitfire Grill and later Iris. The music, as it would be heard in the next year, was pretty well in tact and rendered inJumanji. In Jumanji, these Spitfire Grill moments appear in short, quick bursts rather than all over the score, and are fleshed out especially in “A New World” and “End Titles”. These musical bits lighten Jumanji up and add a warmth and depth that don’t appear nearly enough. Horner must have realized he hit gold since what was written here was expanded upon significantly for The Spitfire Grill, and fans of that score should investigate Jumanji for just these tracks--it would be worth it since this is where it all began.

One thing that has to be said about this score is that the recording is just awful. I know Shawn Murphy is said to be one of the best in the business, but his recordings (especially in 1995 when he also botched Braveheart) tend to have a lower dynamic range and feel more condensed. No where else is it so true an in Jumanji, and I sometimes feel like I’m listening to the score through the floor several stories above the scoring stage. This recording is “foggy” (best way I can describe the experience), distorted, and the instruments feel as though they were recorded at very close range, limiting an expansive feeling. The best I can describe the sensation I get is that the instruments were suffocating each other. Nothing reverberates well and nothing really comes alive. It may be that my complaints about the rendering of the action music arise from the shoddy recording quality.

Overall, Jumanji is a mediocre score, but not because the music itself is problematic (except the rendering of the action music/recording quality thereof), but because it is a score with an identity crisis. The themes are decent, but all the music heard had been done as well or better in the past and elements yet to be heard would be fleshed out in their future scores. Jumanji is by no means a bad score and its easy to garner enjoyment from some of the wackier, tender, and horrific moments, but overall, there is too much that just doesn’t go anywhere. If one is willing to be patient, one will enjoy the score since it really has its moments (especially those to be fleshed out in The Spitfire Grill), but if it has to be consistent and/or nonstop, it is best to look elsewhere.

*** out of 5.