The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle

Mark Mothersbaugh's place in TV music history is assured with his outrageously catchy main theme to Rugrats which seems to be instantly identifiable by almost anyone these days. He scored the film version of the show, but other than that, know little about him. I can't say I ever watched Rocky and Bullwinkle when I was younger. I suspect that I'm either too young to remember or it was one of those shows hugely popular in America, but little known over here.

Mothersbaugh's score for the big screen version is either just silly or something of a Carl Stalling inspired effort. The opening few tracks show some promise with a little amusing invention, however after that things are somewhat hit and miss. In fairness, there isn't a lot one can say about a score like this. As with more zany comedy scoring, many of the tracks only happen unto themselves and bear little resemblance to anything around them. Unfortunately, few of these individual ideas are interesting enough on their own and so the entire thing lurches from vignette to vignette, neither being separately good nor better than the sum of the parts.

I'm sure that Mothersbaugh had fun composing the score; it's full of energy and hardly ever flags, however it's really just not that interesting musically. Yet again, I must rely on the old get out clause that there are only so many ways to score silly comedy films and Mothersbaugh doesn't do a bad job. On the other hand, there are plenty of composers who could have penned something just a bit more memorable after the event.