King Kong by James Newton Howard

James Newton Howard is a decent composer and that is exactly what King Kong is; a decent score. He replaced Howard Shore after Shore’s score was rejected by director Peter Jackson (citing creative differences) and JNH had only 5 weeks to write 2 hours 48 minutes of music for the film.

I’ve never been a big fan of James Newton Howard; in fact, the only other scores I own by him are Unbreakable and Batman Begins with Hans Zimmer, both of which fall somewhere between decent and good. Even though I was underwhelmed with the music as I heard it in King Kong, I decided to give it another chance.

I am still underwhelmed.

It’s not that the music isn’t serviceable and one could argue that not noticing the music through most of the movie is the mark of a good score. But, in a manner of speaking, I’m not noticing it on the album either.

The “main title” is uninspired much like the art decoish main title sequence in the film. Most of the action cues don’t seem to have much adrenaline behind them. The quiet moments are pleasant and there is some nice piano work sprinkled throughout.

The album’s “centerpiece” is the five part “Beauty Killed the Beast”, which encompasses the battle on the Empire State Building. This is the best part of the album; not only is the music more exciting than anywhere else and some other themes from the score are intertwined nicely but the orchestration seems more involved and better layered than in previous pieces. I like the choral parts too; nice use of the solo voice as Kong plummets to the street below. My only complaint is that some of the cues are only a couple of minutes long; couldn’t this have been edited into one long track?

I’m not sure if it’s the production or the mixing or even the orchestration, but the score sounds flat. There is little or no depth to the “sound” of the music and the fact that most of the score itself isn’t particularly dynamic to begin with makes the sound’s lack of dimension even more noticeable. Perhaps they felt that they had to rush to get the cd released before the movie. I hope if they decide to do an expanded album at some point that they remix the music.

I give King Kong by James Newton Howard TWO and a HALF stars out of FIVE.