If The Mask Of Zorro (1998) supposed a happy regressive exercise to the Horner outlines of the past (at least partly) that had produced scores of the size of Willow (1988) or The Rocketeer (1991), Mighty Joe Young takes back their composer's more radical style that had already captured with energy in their last compositions, especially in Deep Impact (1998). For the occasion Horner has turn again to the shakuhachi of Kazu Matsui and the kena of Tony Hinnigan (a quite debatable option -as in most of the cases in that it uses them-, given the origin of the instruments and the context on which these act), and with an important battery of African percussion, part of which has been very used by the Hollywood composers -it comes to my mind the use of the hollowed logs by Bernard Herrmann in White Witch Doctor (1953)-. The score, that has a really épatante polyphonic structure, is tremendously anodyne, with a ridiculous, infantile main theme that looks like a variation of Deep Impact's; for these reasons, among other, the quality of the work is more than questionable. Although Horner writes a beautiful African song in collaboration with the habitual Will Jennings, of similar root to the leitmotiv of Amistad (1997) or to that of Congo (1995), and that it wisely integrates in the whole of the work, the score falls in the most infuriating composite Horner routine, without brilliant solutions (as those that he shows in the score of The Mask Of Zorro) and repeating the pre-fabricated outlines at the style of Ransom (1996) for the action sequences that don't contribute anything new. The 74 minutes that the CD lasts feels, therefore, unbearable. Advisable only for fans. D.R.C.

/ HOLLYWOOD RECORDS HR62172-2 / 73 '

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