First thing’s first. This album contains the score for the film as composed by Alan Silvestri. There are several one-star ratings for this product that have been written by people who were expecting the pop songs from the film, despite Mr. Silvestri’s name being listed as the album artist AND appearing on the cover of the album, as well as the pop songs not being included at all in the track listing. If you’re looking for the “Songs from the Motion Picture” album, it is available for download separately both here on Amazon and on iTunes (as of this writing, it does not appear to be available on CD).
Now that that’s out of the way, this score is a real gift to Alan Silvestri fans. "Back to the Future" lovers will notice a lot of stylistic similarities between the two scores (not including the direct quote in the track “Real World Consequences” as Wade uses the Zemeckis Cube). Other direct references include Max Steiner’s "King Kong" theme and a very robust performance of Akira Ifukube’s "Godzilla" march. None of the material from "The Shining" appears on this album--I’m not even entirely sure if that music was rerecorded or just taken wholesale from "The Shining" soundtrack, it sounds so darn close to the original.
This is a very optimistic, sweeping fantasy score. Two main themes stand out very prominently, though there lacks immediately identifiable themes for the love story and the villain. Occasionally some of the music is a bit anonymous--it’s admittedly hard to weave a rich tapestry of thematic material when dancing around near-constant song placement, dialogue, and explosions. But by and large, this is a fun action-adventure score that serves the film well and is very enjoyable on album. It might not be the complete slam-dunk that, say, "Back to the Future" was, but it’s close.
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