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Doogal Composed by Mark Thomas |
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Track Listing | |||
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01 - Main Titles
(1:48)
Andrea Remanda and Goldust |
15 - The
What-a-Snails Waltz (0:32) |
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Orchestrated and Conducted by Mark Thomas Additional Music by James L. Venable and John Davis Produced by Mark Thomas Released by Decca Records on March 7, 2006 |
Total Running Time: 53:48 |
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Welcome to CGI Crapfest 2006! The success of Pixar and Dreamworks is finally catching up with us as we experience a deluge of sub-par computer animated films. A side-effect of this market glut is the proliferation of soundtrack albums that serve more of a purpose to entice people to purchase due to song offerings instead of offering an actual score-based album. Or at least I hope that's the case with Doogal here. If the songs that pepper this album are actually in the film, I cannot begin to fathom what structure problems this movie has. Not that I plan to see it. Reviews have been bad and it seems made more for kids than anything else (and that's not even to touch on the fact that all the British voices have been replaced with the likes of Whoopi Goldberg and Chevy Chase...one actor who never really had a prime, and another who is way past it. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which is which).
Listening to this album can be boiled down into a very succinct description. Between one and two minutes of some interesting score material followed by either by a horribly-out-of-place-and-clichéd song or a crappy written-for-the-film song. The pre-written songs have all been done to death in this arena before, while the newer ones are nothing special. In both cases, you lose. I'm left wondering if all of this material is actually used in the film, because if it is, I can see just how the soundtrack alone would get annoying. On album, the annoyance flows from the fact that (especially in the first half) so little score material is allowed to sink in before the cue ends and a songs appears.
Just writing about it makes me ill, so let's move on to what is here of the score by Mark Thomas. It's really hurt by the fact that the album is running all over the place, but Thomas does the best he can, and actually starts to go epic in a few cues, reminiscent of what John Debney did for Chicken Little (speaking of which, if you're familiar with that album at all, it's a good indication of what's in store here, just worse). The use of a full sounding orchestra coupled with some powerful choir moments make this score stand out for a few minutes. Given how much everything is chopped up, there really isn't any effort to pull it all together and the score suffers greatly for it.
If your kid liked the movie and wants the CD for the picture of Doogal on the front, then you might make his or her day with a purchase. Otherwise, there is absolutely no reason to have this.
Reviewed on April 17, 2006 |
See Also
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