Directed by: Gore Verbinski Actors: Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Jack Davenport Date: 13/08/2003 Genre: Adventure Duration: 144 minutes Country: United States More info at Cinenews
Review of Andreas Lindahl, submitted at 2008-01-20 21:25:40, score: 6/10
I just can't help but to feel a little sorry for Badelt. Here's this, clearly, very talented guy that has managed to stray away from the typical Media Ventures sound. He's hot off a couple of really good scores, The Time Machine, for example. And so he gets to do a pirate flick. "Fun", he must have been thinking. "This is a perfect opportunity for me to write some great, old-fashioned pirate music with a modern twist, kind of what Harry Gregson-Williams did for Sinbad". But instead he and his composer buddies have to do what the Media Ventures composers have been doing for practically every Bruckheimer flick ever produced (A couple of hundreds perhaps. Well... more than two, anyway.). So that's disappointing (it's also disppointing that Silvestri never got to score this film. I was praying for something like The Mummy Returns - with a Ship and an Eyepatch"), but here comes the strange thing about this score and its effect on me.
To be regarded as a proper and serious reviewer I would probably have to bash this soundtrack. But I won't, because I'm not a proper, serious reviewer. And I happen to like it. I really do. Despite the fact that most of it basically is an overused cliché, a trifle, a "been there done that" score. And even though cues such as "Will and Elizabeth" is so much Media Ventures that it almost gets a little silly. And despite the huge lifts from scores such as The Rock and Gladiator. But yes, I like it. It's somewhat of a guilty pleasure. Pirates of the Caribbean is a darn entertaining score. And fun. So sue me.
The main theme screams MV, serving as your standard powerful march, often performed by a large array of brass instruments with plenty of pounding percussion in the background. Its appearance in "Barbosa is Hungry" is a perfect example. Great cue, that ows a lot to The Rock. The more quiet material is dominated by a nice slow theme, allowed to shine in "Moonlight Serenade", for at least a couple of minutes, before the action music bursts onto the stage again. There's also a little reocurring grovvy fiddle ditty, which also opens the CD in "Fog Bound". But it is the action music that dominates the score. And it's great fun.
It's interesting to note that seven (!) composers, apart from Badelt, wrote additional music for this film. It's not easy to tell which parts that have Badelt as their source, with such a large number of contributors, but I choose to believe that the more original parts are his, at least. Makes sense, after all, that he should focus on the fresher material, while his collaborators take care of parts of the rest. And I don't know if the large number of composers involved is the main reason Pirates of the Caribbean is a hotchpotch of purely orchestral parts, 100% synth cues and something in between. It's not really annoying, but certainly a little strange. Not that Media Ventures and synths is a new combination, but it is rarely this obvious.
Pirates of the Caribbean is perhaps the most unoriginal score of the summer, but it's also one of the most entertaining. It's just not possible to take this score seriously. And why should we? We always have a tendency to be so frickin serious about the music we listen to. It's just music, after all. Right, laddy? Haaaaar!
1. Fog Bound (2:17)
2. The Medallion Calls (1:53)
3. The Black Pearl (2:17)
4. Will and Elizabeth (2:08)
5. Swords Crossed (3:16)
6. Walk the Plank (1:59)
7. Barbosa is Hungry (4:06)
8. Blood Ritual (3:33)
9. Moonlight Serenade (2:09)
10. To the Pirates' Cave! (3:31)
11. Skull and Crossbones (3:24)
12. Bootstrap's Bootstraps (2:39)
13. Underwater March (4:13)
14. One Last Shot (4:46)
15. He's a Pirate (1:31)
