With the score for Treasure Planet - Disney's take on Robert Louis Stevenson's classic novel Treasure Island - James Newton Howard continues the successful collaboration with Walt Disney Pictures. With the past Howard/Disney collaborations (Dinosaur and Atlantis) and the possibility of some bold adventurous pirate music in mind, this is a score many have been looking forward to. And while I have to admit it's not the score I had hoped for, it's still a good, and at times excellent, effort, with a couple of really great highlights.
The main theme is one of them. Presented in the first score track, "12 Years Later", and allowed to really shine in cues like "To the Spaceport", "The Launch" and "Jim Saves the Crew" this is a wonderful fanfare sounding theme. Howard's strong and busy writing for brass shines through, and coupled with choir and the rest of the large orchestra the statements of this theme are always welcome. And although the remaining themes aren't that strong, they are far from unmemorable and bland. There's a slow and peaceful theme heard for the first time in "12 Years Later", that resembles Howard's music for Snow Falling on Cedars. The Silver character has been blessed with a theme of his own. It's surprisingly low key and sad and appears in tracks such as "Silver Comforts Jim" and "Silver Leaves".
When it comes to orchestrations and sound the differences are fewer than the similarities, when compared to Howard's two previous Disney scores. The action parts, however enjoyable and rousing they are, are pretty much standard Howard stuff, with strong brass and percussion. "The Portal" and "Jim Saves the Crew" are the two large action cues and are actually very good, even if they, as already said, don't break new ground. As for the remaining parts of the score there is a great deal of quiet underscore - and this is actually the scores' largest drawback - making it a little hard to really focus on the music at times, especially since many parts have been heard in earlier scores by Howard. They sound awfully familiar, anyway.
Following the style of Disney's modern version of Stevenson's story, Howard adds an electric guitar to the mix in two of the tracks, "12 Years Later" and "Jim Saves the Crew". Although it gives these parts of the score a rather fresh and exciting sound it actually is a little too close to what Horner did for The Perfect Storm.
All in all Treasure Planet is perhaps Howard's weakest Disney score to date (Dinosaur still being the best), but since Howard is Howard the score is far from disappointing and contains some really good parts. The final track, "Silver Leaves", is one of the highlights with its upbeat jigs and optimistic statement of the scores' main theme. An excellent ending to a decent score.